Shadows of Prophecy

4

Jenah led Tess and Sara out of the guest room and through the larger circular entrance room by which they had come. He paused a moment to orient them.

“Each Anari Tel consists of three family groups. This room is my family’s entrance to the temple.” He pointed through a window at one of the serpentine paths that led to another round building surrounded by smaller houses. “That is my family’s dwelling place. My people always come to the temple along that path and through this door. This demonstrates our awareness that we are part of a larger whole, yet each must follow his own path within the whole.”

“It’s beautiful,” Tess said, looking around her at the glyphs on the walls. “I can see why people believe the Ilduin secrets lie within your temples. These walls sing with meaning and yet hover out of reach, like forgotten dreams.”

“Like forgotten dreams,” Sara echoed, nodding. “Yes.”

“Come,” Jenah said, indicating a door on the inner wall. “The Telneren await.”

They stepped through the door into another large circular room, obviously at the center of the temple. The walls and ceiling offered a panoply of glyphs and recessed reliefs that drew the attention from one to the next as if by a magnetic force. In the center, a round altar stood with three lighted candles. Around the altar sat six Anari women, their eyes closed, mouths moving silently and yet in unison. Jenah touched a finger to his lips and waited with them as the women completed their prayer.

When they finished the prayer, the six women opened their eyes simultaneously and turned to Jenah. The oldest of the women spoke quietly.

“These are the Ilduin?”

“Yes, mother,” Jenah said. “I present Lady Tess Birdsong and Lady Sara Deepwell, of Whitewater, in the northern lands. Upon my honor, they come with pure hearts and of free will in the service of the Anari.”

“Upon your honor, with pure hearts and of free will, we accept their service,” the woman said. Then she broke into a smile and offered a slight bow, instantly mirrored by the others. “Welcome to Gewindi-Telner, my Ladies. We are honored to be blessed with Ilduin presence.”

“The honor is ours,” Tess said, repeating the bow and the words Jenah had taught her, the ritual greetings of the Anari. “My hosts bless me with their hospitality.”

“My name is Eiehsa of Gewindi-Tel,” the woman said, now stepping closer. “My son has told me of your meeting, and the courage of your companions. I would thank you for saving my son’s life, and know that I feel such in my heart, but a formal recitation would neglect the souls of those whom you could not save and the mothers who grieve them. I fear you have come to our land in perilous times, and yet we ask your blessing.”

“My blessing?” Tess asked, surprised to learn that Eiesha was Jenah’s mother. “I don’t understand.”

“Ilduin were they who taught us to shape these walls such,” Eiehsa said, “and Ilduin are the spirits that move within Anari hands as they shape the stone. It is the custom of our people that children receive an Ilduin blessing as soon as they leave their mothers’ breasts, but our only Ilduin was taken as a slave four years past, and many are the unblessed children. On behalf of my Tel, I entreat that you would bless these young souls, that their future may be brighter than their past.”

“I do not know what to do,” Tess said. “Sara and I are of Ilduin blood, yes, but we have not yet learned even a fraction of what that means.”

The woman smiled. “It is not what you may know that would bless our children, Lady Tess. It is the essence of the goodness that lies within you which carries the grace of blessing.”

Tess remembered the horrors of Lorense and wondered if there was indeed goodness in her Ilduin heritage. Would she bless these people—or damn them? She could see the same thoughts echoed in Sara’s eyes.

“I fear the Ladies doubt themselves, Mother,” Jenah said. “Much pain have they suffered in their journey here, and I sense there is much they regret. Little has Lady Tess told me, but in the spaces between her words there are volumes to be read.”

The woman nodded and held out a hand to each of them, palms up. The warmth in the woman’s eyes completed the invitation, and Tess and Sara each placed a hand in hers. The woman’s eyes closed, and her lips moved again in a silent prayer. Although her back was to the other Telneren, they, too, closed their eyes and mouthed the prayer in unison.

“These are hands of soft hearts,” Eiehsa said, her eyes still closed. “For only soft hearts could grieve so. May Adis guide their grieving hearts into safe harbor and his cleansing waters carry their stains into the abyss.”

“May Adis guide their grieving hearts into safe harbor and his cleansing waters carry their stains into the abyss,” the other women echoed in unison.

Tess had closed her eyes almost on impulse, but now she opened them as she felt water pouring over her hand. Two of the other women had approached them with shallow, stone pitchers from which the water flowed.

Eiehsa smiled and gave their hands a squeeze. “What Adis has taken into the abyss, you must release, lest you be taken into the abyss with it. Bear your burdens no longer, noble Ilduin.”

Tess’s thoughts warred against each other. On one side was the impulse to accept that what was past was past and embrace her future. On the other lay doubt, the urge to dismiss the woman’s words as so much mystical refuse. Only when she saw the tears flowing down Sara’s face did she know to which impulse she would yield. There was naught to be gained and much to be lost in continuing to flay herself for what had happened.

“I accept the forgiveness of Adis,” Sara whispered through her tears.

“I accept the forgiveness of Adis,” Tess repeated, now feeling her own tears begin to flow. “Let us go forward together, Sara, in the good that we know to be.”

“Yes, Lady Tess,” Sara said, reaching over to squeeze her hand. “In the good that we know to be.”

A wide smile lighted Eiehsa’s face and, it seemed, the entire room. “And now, you will bless our children?”

The children filed in through the three great entryways, accompanied by mothers who appeared both anxious and proud. All the children were very young, some infants in arms, others certainly no more than five summers. At the altar, the three lines merged and began to move in a circle around Tess and Sara so that each child would be blessed by both.

As she touched each soft head and absorbed each smile, Tess felt beauty growing within her, a lightness and warmth that she was sure she had never felt before. Her lips murmured gentle words of blessing, but it was as if she was the one being blessed. She had no idea how many children she might have blessed…a hundred? But she was transported by the experience until, at its very end, she lifted her eyes to the dome of rock above her head and stared into its very heart.

It was as if the symbols drew her, lifting her, until she felt light on her feet, as if she could soar above. Surely all the blessings she had given and the warmth she had received in turn had gone to her head.

“Tess?” Sara’s touch was gentle, but it brought her back to earth. Tess realized they were alone in the temple now; even the clan mothers had disappeared.

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to gather herself.

“Did you see something? The mothers thought you were communing and left you to be in peace.”

“I don’t know.” Tess tilted her head again and looked upward, but this time the symbols on the ceiling merely looked like a foreign language and tugged at her not at all. “I felt something, but…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps I’m simply tired.”

“We should go back to our room, then. It’s time for a meal, and it’s growing chillier even in here.”

Tess nodded and began to follow Sara out of the temple and through the nave. A carving caught her eye in the nave, however, and drew her immediately to it.

“What is it?” Sara asked. “Do you recognize it?”

“I don’t…” Tess shook her head, trying to find a way to describe what she was feeling. “I don’t remember it, exactly. But it’s familiar somehow, as if I should remember it.” Hesitantly she reached out to touch the symbol and run her hand over it. At once it was as if she could hear music.

She snatched her hand back sharply.

“Tess?”

“Touch it, Sara, and tell me if you sense anything.”

Sara’s brow knitted, but she obeyed, placing her fingertips on the lines that delineated the symbol, drawing them gently over it as Tess had. Then she, too, yanked her hand back.

“Music,” she breathed.

“Aye,” murmured Tess.

“But what does it mean?”

“I know not.” Then a thought struck her, and with it a sense of wonderment. “It is as if they are trying to speak to us.”

Sara’s mouth opened with awe, and slowly she placed her hand on the symbol again. “Aye,” she whispered. “Aye. It plays the same notes again.”

Lowering her hand, she looked at Tess. “What shall we do?”

“I think perhaps we should ask the Telneren if they hear the music, too.”

“And what if they don’t?”

“Then we may have found the means of the transmission of the Mysteries.”

“Oh!” Sara’s eyes grew huge.

“It would be wonderful if we could understand it.”

Sara surprised her with a little giggle. “Aye, there is that, isn’t there? What good is an answer if you cannot understand it?”

* * * *

The war councils had already begun. When Tess and Sara returned to the guest lodging, they found that all the men, except Tom, had gone.

“They’re meeting somewhere,” Tom told them. “To discuss strategy for an Anari uprising. Gewindi-Tel is too weak now to act alone, but there are other Tels, many of them, and there are thousands living in the great Anari city of Anahar. So they are discussing how best to get started.”

Sara at once sat beside him. The fire was blazing brightly, and more food had replaced the earlier repast, spread atop one of the stone pallets. “Why aren’t you with them?”

“Archer wanted me to stay here to look after the two of you.” He looked as if he felt a little dismayed by that order.

“Well, I am glad you are here to be our champion,” Sara said stoutly. “I would have missed you.”

Tom brightened, and Tess turned away to hide her smile. She was, she realized, still ravenous, so she picked up a small stone bowl and began to fill it with tantalizing tidbits. “I wonder,” she said, “that they can afford to feed us so well.”

“Apparently the evil winter didn’t strike early here as it did up north,” Tom answered. “I was talking with Jenah about that. He had heard of what was happening but had no idea it was as severe as it was, especially around Derda.”

Just as Tess began to feel replete with food and was considering stretching out on her bedroll, which someone had kindly spread for her, Archer entered the lodging, along with a blast of winter’s breath.

“We must pack and leave at once,” he said.

Tess leaped to her feet. “What’s wrong?”

“The entire village is making ready to leave. Bozandari revenge is about to arrive.”

5

Archer sat astride his mount, watching the line of villagers as they made their way up into the crags of the mountains above the town. It was a moonless night, but somehow the cliff faces reflected enough starlight to make the path visible.

It was also a terrible night to be exposed to the elements. The bitter, icy wind rushed down from the north, bringing with it the smell of snow soon to fall. Men and women alike carried the younger children in their arms, even though they also bore heavy packs on their backs. Every single member of Gewindi-Tel had tried to bring enough to get them as far as Anahar.

Archer doubted they had succeeded. Even with his party’s packhorses loaded as fully as they could be, no one could carry enough. They would have to hope they would be given food as they passed through other villages.

And that they would grow this small seed of an army.

There were no elderly among the Anari. They did not age as did other men. Created at the hands of the Ilduin, they had been gifted with long life and extraordinary health. Aye, they could die from illness and injury, but illness seldom befell them. They grew older, more mature, and were less likely to want adventure than the younger members of the group, but until the day they died they worked the fields and the stones as strongly as anyone.

The reduction in their numbers, the shrinking of the clans, had come about only because of the Bozandari and their rapacious ways.

The long lives of the Anari, Archer thought, should have warned the Bozandari that eventually trouble would come. For among even this band of Anari, probably a third of them could still remember the times before the slavers had come and conquered them. These elders helped keep the flame of freedom alive in the hearts of their people.

Bowed but not broken, he thought. The Bozandari would never understand.

As the last members of the column passed him, he turned his mount and began to follow. When he reached a promontory, he paused to look back. He could see the torches of the approaching Bozandari army to the northeast, but they were yet a long way from the village.

This group would escape. Satisfied, he spurred after them.

Giri emerged from the night a short time later and fell in beside him. “We’ll be well away by first light.”

“Aye.”

Another icy gust of wind blew down the funnel of the mountains and into their faces. For an instant Archer felt the sting of sleet. Then it was gone.

“What I do not understand,” Giri said, when the wind would no longer snatch away his words, “is why the Bozandari have suddenly become…worse. ’Twas bad enough when they could come into the telners, taking the strongest and best to make into slaves or whores, but never before did it seem that they wanted to rid the world of all Anari. After all, we have been their garden of new slaves.”

Archer rode silently for a minute or two, thinking over how much he should tell his friend. He did not wish to dishearten Giri, but on the other hand…

“There is a worse evil afoot in this world, my friend, than Bozandar and its armies. I fear this evil is using the Bozandari as he used Lantav Glassidor and his minions.”

“What is this evil?”

“Some name him Chaos. Others call him the Enemy.”

Giri stiffened but questioned no further. Apparently the memory of the Anari was not as short as other races, who had long since forgotten such tales or abandoned them as fantasies.

Archer sighed and lifted his head to the heavens, noting that the stars were beginning to blur behind wisps of clouds.

The tight, cold knot that had never quite eased over the countless years seemed to be growing in his chest until it would consume him.

Thus it begins again.

* * * *

The first glow of dawn found them well away from Gewindi-Telner, hidden in the wild reaches of mountains only the Anari knew well enough to traverse. Even here, far out from civilization, there were signs that some rock had spoken to a mason and been harvested.

But the Anari also knew that some of the mountains and rock bound evil in their depths, an evil as old as the world itself. Here they passed quietly, as unobtrusive as might be. Remembering the fire creature they had fought in the Adasen basin, Tom could well understand the caution he saw in those around him.

But at other times there was apparently no evil to concern them, and the pace quickened and conversation resumed.

Eventually, before the canyons and ravines in the mountains had felt the sun’s touch, Jenah called a halt.

“It is safe here,” Jenah told Archer and the rest of his party. “Long have Anari camped safely in the embrace of these rocks.”

Embrace was a good word, Tom thought, looking around them, for it seemed as if they had entered a circle of level ground created by the stones themselves. Dismounting, he helped as much as he could, lifting packs from the tired shoulders of Anari mothers and fathers who carried children now awakening and famished. He helped build cook fires with a strange black rock that burned and seemed to be in abundance here, and carried buckets of water from the waterfall hidden behind the rocks.

Soon tantalizing smells filled the camp, and, not long after that, hungry children were being fed before their elders dipped in.

He was glad finally to rejoin his own little group: Archer, Ratha, Giri, Tess and Sara. Most especially Sara. Any weariness he might have felt was banished when she smiled at him and squeezed his hand as he sat beside her.

She passed him a bowl of the stew she had made, and he tucked in with great delight.

“You are sure it is he?” Ratha asked Archer.

“Aye. His ugly touch is all over the world right now. After Lorense, there can be no doubt.”

Tom leaned forward. “Who are you talking about?”

Archer looked at the lad gravely. “Have you heard the tales about Chaos?”

Tom felt his heart skip a beat. “He who would destroy the world?”

“Aye, lad. The same.”

“But I thought…” Tom’s voice trailed off as he looked inward and realized that what he had once thought to be a fairy tale for children was no such thing after all. He had sensed it ever since Lorense and what he had seen that day as Sara and Tess had battled Lantav Glassidor. The mage, skilled though he was, had been possessed by something darker and uglier, and Tom had seen it.

He looked at Archer once again. “Glassidor,” he said. “He was but a doorway.”

“Exactly,” Archer replied. Even in the warmth of the rising sun, the day remained cold, and Archer was wrapped deeply in his cloak. For a man who could look like vengeance on two feet when they faced trouble, he appeared singularly inoffensive at the moment.

“But not the only one,” Tom said, though he was hoping he was wrong.

“Not the only one,” Archer agreed, his voice heavy. “We have heard of other hives. You know that. But there is more afoot.”