Shadows of Prophecy

Tom seemed to draw his attention back from the fire. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I was daydreaming.”

“We’re all exhausted,” Sara said reassuringly. “I wish I could lie down and sleep.”

Tom smiled faintly. “Not with all those swords pointed at us.”

Tess returned his smile, then twisted to look at the encircling Anari. Giri and Ratha had predisposed her to like their kind, but someone or something among these men filled her with a dark sense of cold, oily evil. One among them belonged to the enemy. One among them was a traitor to his kind.

She wished she could tell which one, but that sight was denied her. Instead she was gifted only with the amorphous ugly feeling.

Suddenly the night sky filled with a red flare to the south of them. All of them gaped, never having seen such before.

Then Tess felt something else. Her head bowed, and her heart ached. “Many are dying,” she said. “Too many.”

Sara gripped her hand and squeezed it. “I feel it, too,” she said in a hushed voice. “The battle has begun.”

Two hours felt like two days as they waited for the return of their companions. Tess’s thoughts kept returning to Acher, leader and friend, a man with strength to lean on. A man who still distrusted her, yet protected her. She closed her eyes, willing his safe return along with Giri and Ratha.

Eventually the sound of heavy, uneven footfalls could be heard approaching across the rocky terrain. The three immediately rose to their feet, and their captors turned their attention and their swords to the sounds.

Moments later, as if born of the very darkness itself, Archer appeared. Giri and Ratha followed, between them holding yet another Anari, who appeared to have trouble keeping his feet. Farther yet behind them came another handful of dark men. Then no more.

“We were the ones ambushed,” Archer announced. “Most of Gewindi-Tel were slaughtered.”

The man being steadied by Ratha and Giri lifted his head suddenly, and the heat of anger blazed from him, almost palpable in the night. “We were betrayed!” Jenah spat. “Betrayed by one of our own.”

Tess hurried toward him. “You are injured!”

“Aye, Lady,” Giri said. “A sword gashed his back as he fought to defend his brothers. Let no one question his valor on this night.”

“Let me see.”

But Jenah straightened himself and shook off the support of Ratha and Giri. “I need no white healer. I need a sword. I want to know who betrayed us!” Then, his last dregs of strength used up, he crumpled to his knees.

“Lady,” said Giri urgently, as he, Ratha and Archer formed a protective triangle around the fallen leader, swords drawn. Tom and Sara drew their weapons, as well, and stood back to back.

Tess needed no further encouragement. She ran forward to the fallen Anari, hoping against hope that she could find in herself whatever it was that had saved a young lad in Derda who had been all but dead from cold and starvation. She had no idea what she had done then, but everyone had been sure she had been the cure.

Now she knelt and laid her hands on the fallen man’s back, against the hot, wet blood, feeling the slash beneath her palms. She closed her eyes, imagining as vividly as she could that the wound beneath her hands was knitting together, muscle to muscle, skin to skin. Her palms grew hot, as if they were aflame, and she nearly cried out.

Moments later, the world faded into blackness.

* * * *

A healer such as the world hadn’t seen since the White Lady, Theriel, Archer thought, as he watched over the unconscious Tess and the steadily improving Jenah. With his own eyes he had seen flesh heal beneath her hands. Now there was nothing but a scar left across Jenah’s back.

But the cost to Tess had been great. As the sun began to rise, painting the red desert in a myriad of fiery colors, he cradled her head in his lap and waited for her to awaken.

All the other Anari, both those who had been in battle and those who had stood guard here, had put away their swords and sat, waiting. Tom and Sara watched Tess with worried eyes. Ratha and Giri alone remained on guard, ready to protect their company and Jenah.

Tess stirred, a murmur escaping her. At once Archer stroked her golden tresses. “Be still,” he said. “You are safe.”

For a fleeting instant a smile fluttered over her lips, then vanished. He had seen her smile so rarely, he realized. But none of them smiled nearly enough these days. The savagery of their time in Lorense, and the horrors of the deaths of thousands of refugees in Derda, had left a deep mark on all of them.

Tess’s eyes fluttered open and met his, blue meeting gray for an electric instant. Her mouth formed a surprised O; then she abruptly sat up. At once she raised a hand to her head.

“Who hit me with the hammer?” she asked.

“’Twas the healing,” Archer reminded her.

Recalled to what had passed, she looked toward Jenah and appeared as stunned as any of them by what she saw. “Oh!”

At that moment, Jenah rolled over onto his back with a groan. His eyes opened suddenly, taking in the dawning day, and Giri and Ratha standing guard. “What happened?” he demanded.

“Sit up and see,” Giri said. “The Lady Tess healed you.”

Jenah pushed himself up gingerly, as if he did not believe what he was told. But upon discovering he no longer hurt, he leapt to his feet and looked around.

“Thank you,” he said, bowing to Tess. “And please forgive my words, Lady. My people are not used to such kindnesses from yours.”

“You were in pain,” Tess said, smiling. “People oft say things they do not mean. Think nothing more of it.”

But then his gaze returned to his fellows.

“So this is all that remains of Gewindi-Tel, the proudest of the northern clans.” His voice was already sparking with anger again. “A handful of stalwarts and a traitor.”

The men who had fought beside Jenah last night stirred not at all. Their faces were as impassive as if they had been carved from the stone the Anari worked with such unparalleled skill. The five who had remained to guard the campsite were not quite as impassive, however. Though they betrayed little except by the flicker of their eyes, it was obvious that they knew suspicion fell upon them.

“You have nothing to say?” Jenah asked.

“I wish only that I had died in my brother’s place,” one of the men said. “First came he from my mother’s womb, but only by the moments it took for me slip out after him. I spent my life chasing him. If now I must follow him into death, then so be it.”

Jenah seemed to weigh the man’s words for a long moment, then nodded. “Be at peace, Jahar Gewindi. Your brother died at my side, valiant to the last. Let not your mother lose two sons on this day. Already too many mothers will bear that burden.”

Archer watched as Jenah interrogated each of the men, one by one. As long as he had spent in the company of Ratha and Giri, he could not yet read the faces of Anari except in the most obvious of moments. What Jenah sought, and whether he was seeing it, Archer had no idea.

“It is not safe to remain here,” Tom said, quietly. “Master Jenah, I know you are angry, and that one thought alone burns in your mind. But we are not far removed from the Bozandari who killed your kinsmen last night. There will be time enough to sort this out once we have found a suitable resting place.”

“And what of a resting place for my brothers?” Jenah asked. “Am I to leave them in the sand, to be picked over by the vultures, their bleached bones to be swallowed up into the vast, empty memory of the desert?”

“We cannot bear them with us,” Archer said. “And the lad is right. It is too dangerous for us to remain here. The gods will embrace the spirits of your fallen, whatever may befall their bodies.”

“Anari never leave their dead behind,” Jenah said.

“There is much that Anari have never done,” Archer said. “But I fear you will need to learn to do most of it before this war is over. Come, let us away, for the safety of those who remain in your Tel, lest all your mothers weep in vain.”

Tom walked beside Sara, occasionally reaching over to grasp her hand. The sun was nearing its zenith, and even in the middle of winter, faint shimmers of heat rose from the red sands. Their horses walked beside them, pausing from time to time to graze from the occasional bunches of pale green grass or the leaves of the bushes that dotted the landscape.

“This is a beautiful land,” Tom said. “But a hard land, as well.”