The Bride of the Blue Wind Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Author's Note

  The Bride of the Blue Wind

  Victoria Goddard

  Copyright © 2015 by Victoria Goddard

  Published February 2017 by Underhill Books.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-0-9950270-4-6

  Cover Design: Victoria Goddard

  This is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  One

  Aldizar aq Naarun aq Lo of the city of Rin had three daughters, which would ordinarily have earned him much good-natured chaffing from his compatriots and clansmen, but because the mother of his children was Lonar Avramapul the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh, he was instead much congratulated.

  Their first daughter was beautiful and strong as a lioness, and they named her Arzu-aldizarin, and she sat at her mother’s knee and learned the ways of war.

  The second daughter was beautiful and sharp-taloned as a falcon on the wind, and they named her Paliammë-ivanar. She was the delight in her father’s eye; he was an artist who had come to the desert to sculpt the Bandit Queen, and had never left, and he hoped she might follow his trade.

  The third daughter was as beautiful and even-tempered as the moon over the desert, and they called her Sardeet-savarel. She was beloved all of all her clan, for she laughed and sang and broke hearts that mended quickly.

  Each of them beautiful, each of them wise, each of them beloved. Arzu the lioness, Pali the falcon, Sardeet the moon; as they grew in stature, in the songs of the hinterlands of Oclaresh people began to murmur of the bride-prices they would expect, and that no ordinary man could ever hope to pay.

  So say the stories.

  ***

  At fourteen Arzu left, as was the way of her mother’s people, to spend a week in the desert and seek what messages the Wind Lords would send her. She went dressed in bridal scarlet with gold coins braided into her black hair, for it was said that the Wind Lords sometimes chose one for bride or husband; it was considered an honour beyond merit or questioning, for the one so chosen would become as a god in the Halls of the Sky, the palace in the heart of the Desert of Kaph where the gods ruled the world with wills fickle as the wind. One did not return from the Halls of the Sky a living man or woman, although sometimes those left behind would be granted a vision and the new name given to the one once their own, and a new deity would be inscribed in the stele of the clan gods.

  When Arzu returned she went to her father and her mother and her two sisters and kissed them, and asked for their blessings, for she had had a vision of magic in knots and thread, and would go to those who made the carpets in the mountains to the south of the Desert of Kaph, and return to the clan a shaman of power.

  She was given as her dowry for the carpet weavers a set of chess pieces carved out of jade by a master in a far-off land. Her father gave her small figurines of each of her sisters, and letters for the master weavers, who would recognize in his name an artist of high renown. Her sisters gave her an ivory dagger and a jade stone with a hole in its centre that Sardeet had found one day in the oasis.

  Arzu rode off into the desert on her fine white horse, a short sword on her hip and a quiver on her back, and it was murmured that if she returned she would be the next Queen of the Oclaresh.

  ***

  At fourteen Pali spent a week in the desert, and when she returned she kissed her father and her mother, and her sister who remained at home, and asked for their blessings, for she had seen great wonders in her visions that she would not describe, save that a sword was in her hand for each of them. To Arzu in a letter she confided that she had seen lands beyond her imagination, mirages that she walked in, unafraid and laughing, and had learned the joy of battle.

  Arzu replied that she had learned how to knot two winds together to create a thread that remembered the sky and yearned to be dyed like a bird, and that she had enchanted the statuettes their father had carved to warn her of any danger that might befall her sisters. And she sent to Pali as a gift a bright blue silk scarf from far away across the desert, and her first knotted square, which when Pali unwrapped it in her tent fluttered around like a bird. Sardeet gave her three stones she’d found in the desert, a pink flower-crystal, a grey stone singing with opal on its broken side, and a piece of fool’s gold.

  By her parents Pali was given the heirloom of her mother’s house, the sword that would win her dowry for her, and the promise of horses and camels for when she returned. Her father gave two statuettes of her sisters; her mother, a golden hair-comb she had taken from the head of the great Andariin herself, when the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh fought against the djinn for her territory, and won.

  Pali rode out on her dapple-grey horse, with a white falcon on her wrist and a bow at her back, the sword muffled in cloth as befit an apprentice, and set off the same direction Arzu had taken, but she turned north when she reached the mountains instead of south, and found her way to the high valleys where the Warriors of the Mountains trained in their veils.

  People said she had the light of the old legends on her, and that if when she returned she called the clans under one banner they would come.

  ***

  Sardeet was the youngest by three years, and deeply impatient for her journey to the desert and her own vision. She had blossomed young, as they said, and grew in beauty each day, until the murmurs said her bride-price would be the highest any had seen in an age, for her beauty was growing beyond compare.

  When at last her turn came, she went to the desert in the due season, prepared a fire and drank the tea the oldest woman of the clan had given her, and prepared herself for the seven-day vigil. She bore nothing but her bridal-clothes, and a flask containing the tears of a god, which her mother had wrested from a caravan of holy men beset by ifrits and ghouls, and which her father had given her as protection against a fear he would not name.

  On the first day, she saw a horse thunder across the sky, dapple-grey as her sister Pali’s, with hooves of shining silver and an eye bright as a star. He bore a rider, a man of dark skin and flowing white garments, weaponless, unveiled, and trailing power like broken chains behind him.

  On the second day, she saw something like a desert made of lapis lazuli, with a glitter and a motion to it that she’d never imagined. There was a creature on it, like a caparisoned horse with a palanquin, plunging through the blue sand with white grains leaping about it.

  On the third day, she saw an oasis of trees bigger than even in the stories, huge trees as big as mountains, and winding between them a small party of riders, like her father’s statuettes at the feet of the trees. One of them wore a warrior’s veils, and one of them wore a bride’s scarlet, and the rest were strangers; their horses’ livery was fantastic to her eyes.

  On the fourth day, she saw the Moon, walking to and fro in a silver palace, shaped like a woman, her dress the colour of earthshine.

  On the fifth day, a huge eagle came down and picked her up, and carried her away with him to the mountains due east of the desert, and placed her on a flat terrace built of stone before a palace built all of glass, at the feet of a man dressed all in blue.

  “You are as beautiful as the winds have told me,” he said, smiling at her. She saw that his beard was dyed with indigo, oiled and perfumed, scented with frankincense, and that his eyes were black and expressionless as the eagle’s.

  Sardeet knew the stories of the Wind Lords taking their brides from amongst those seeking visions; also she had been receiving complim
ents of that sort from strange gentlemen since she was nine, and she knew how to smile graciously.

  “You are very kind, holy one.”

  He reached down one hand. His nails were clean and filed round and smooth, and he wore three rings on his right hand: an iron one in the shape of a serpent, a silver one with a single black stone set in the band, and a gold one set with a lapis lazuli signet. She accepted his gesture and let him pull her upright.

  He looked her over with a deep intensity, from her crown of black hair braided up with ribbons and coins, down the flaring layers of scarlet embroidered with gold that she had spent a year and a half making for this her vision-quest, to her bare feet with her toenails painted gold—which was her own doing. His eyes were cold but gleaming, and Sardeet felt a strong ripple of desire run through her.

  “Yes. You are worthy.”

  No one, in the stories, was given a choice. But Sardeet said, “Might this one know your name?” For she had loved those stories, and did not know of any that told of a Wind Lord who lived alone in a house all of blue glass; and the eagle had not taken her all the way into the heart of the Great Desert; and her mother was, after all, the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh, and Sardeet was her daughter through and through.

  “There are three rules in my house,” he said. “One: You will have keys for all the doors in my house, but the stone door may not be opened. Two: You will have all you desire, but a door out. And three: You may ask me any question, but each answer I give shall exact of you a day’s silence. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Come,” he said, and off-handedly, “you may call me Olu-olurin,” and he chuckled. She did not make any comment that it sounded a woman’s name; who knew what the Wind Lords were in their essence? Instead she felt all sounds she made disappear, so she walked through the blue glass door silent as one of the dead.

  Inside the palace all was glass. The air was cool and in constant motion, and she heard whispers on the edge of hearing, though she saw no one. He led her to a room containing a round glass well, big enough for her to sit in, and with a casual flick of his hand he summoned a silvery-glinting wind, and said: “This is your new mistress.”

  He left her to the wind’s ministrations. The wind plucked at her clothing and hair until she removed her garments and ribbons, shoved her into the water, where she discovered the delights of bathing in plenty of warm clean water scented with flowers. The wind washed her hair and dried it for her, and rebraided it so that when she was presented in front of a piece of glass with a silver backing—a mirror, she realized, though she’d never seen one so large, only the hand-sized ones her mother sometimes captured from foolish traders—she stood in front of it every inch a bride fit for a Wind Lord. Clean, scented, beautiful, her scarlet and gold the only colour besides blue as far as her eye could see.

  The wind opened a door for her, and she walked through the blue glass halls, her feet still bare, until she came to a room where a feast was laid out, though there was no one there but she and her bridegroom, who smiled at her with an expression that was not human.

  And thus it was that Sardeet-savarel became the seventh bride of Olu-olurin.

  Two

  Four years after she had left to go to the southern mountains, Arzu-aldizarin left the weavers with skills and carpets enough to make her a rich woman. She rode her white horse with an unaccustomed seat, for it had been long and long—four years, in fact—since she had last ridden more than an hour or two. At the place where the road from the southern mountains met the road from the north, she saw there waiting a person on a dapple-grey horse, dressed in the black veils of a Warrior of the Mountains, sitting with absolute ease and patience.

  Arzu reined up and looked at the familiar eyes crinkling above the unfamiliar black veils, and said: “I hope you have not been waiting long?”

  “Two days only,” said Pali, and her voice was calmer and lower than it had been.

  “I have not been riding long of late,” said Arzu apologetically, and both sisters laughed and embraced, and then looked at the fourth way from the crossroads, where the road went straight east, lined with the tombs of the dead.

  Their mother did not believe in sullying her hand or her head with the written word, preferring the oral histories that had been passed down mother to daughter since the Desert of Kaph had been a garden, but their father was from the city, and he had written, with tears spotting the papyrus, that their sister had been taken by the Wind Lords on her vision quest. No one was surprised, for though it had been many years—two generations at least—since anyone had been taken from their clan or their neighbours’, Sardeet’s beauty was certainly enough to win the attention of the gods.

  Arzu had wept, and knotted a carpet of such power that her teachers had placed it for safe-keeping in the temple sanctuary lest any try to ride it, and be carried to their certain grief. She had then sought to become an artist of such surpassing skill that she could in good conscience submit one of her carpets to the next offering to the Wind Lords, which occurred once every twelve years, and when Sardeet might condescend to accept it from her throne of glory. She also knotted a bridal crown of scarlet for Sardeet’s statuette, which seemed to smile with a holy serenity when Arzu looked upon it.

  Pali had performed the full ritual of mourning that the Warriors practised for their dead, seven days in meditation, seven days in prayer, seven days in fasting, and on the one-and-twentieth day released the white falcon to bear her longing into the quiet oblivion of the desert, and let her heart be at peace. Whether this had worked or not no one among the Warriors well knew, for Pali was not one to speak her heart. Like her sister, like their mother when their grandmother died, Pali abandoned herself to her vocation, and so it was that she had taken the first of the veils a full year early.

  The ceremony of the First Veil had taken place in the new moon of the seventh month, and on the full moon, by the custom of the Warriors of the Mountain, Pali was supposed to set off unarmed on a quest to find, and right, an injustice, before she could return and be granted her sword in the ceremony of the Second Veil. On the quarter moon, while she was praying for a sign for her direction, a tiny square of carpet dropped out of the sky before her. Its pattern was in the form of three red flowers connected by a convoluted ribbon of the same colour—the ancient sign for blood of my blood in need.

  Thus it was that Pali rode south to meet her sister.

  ***

  Arzu and Pali embraced, dismounted from their horses, embraced again, and set up camp on the human side of the crossroads. Pali tended the horses and built the fire; Arzu laid out the travelling carpets and the food she had brought. They ate, chatting of little things since their last letters to each other, and only when Arzu had put on water to boil for the slaurigh did Pali say, “And what is it that calls blood to blood, sister of my heart?”

  “For four years the statuette our father gave of you has smiled,” began Arzu, pulling out two bundles wrapped in silk and unwinding the bright blue silk from one to show the carved face of Pali. “Occasionally a shadow has fallen upon it, but, I think, you have told me those things.”

  “I expect so,” said Pali, whose reticence among strangers was released in writing to her older sister.

  Arzu placed the second bundle on the carpet before them, but did not unwrap it. It was wrapped in indigo silk, embroidered in gold and silver.

  “For three years the statuette of our younger sister smiled—” It was not considered appropriate, nor wise, to name one who had been taken by the Wind Lords, not until the name given to the new immortal was revealed—“and by our father’s art grown with her age.”

  “It is so,” said Pali, thinking that it was mostly due to Arzu’s own gifts; hers had not changed so dramatically, though Arzu before her was not so unfamiliar as the four years between fourteen and eighteen might have made.

  “One year ago, when she was … taken, it seemed to have become … splendid. Her express
ion … enamoured. I knotted a bridal crown, and prayed.”

  “I sent my grief by a white falcon,” said Pali, though she had already written to Arzu of this.

  “One month ago,” Arzu said, “I turned to give the new-moon prayers before my household shrine, and I saw … this.”

  She unwrapped the indigo cloth, and Pali had to bite back a cry—that was not considered a good attribute in a Warrior of the Mountain—at the shadowed face of their younger sister.

  “I see,” said Pali, and they both looked into the shadows, to the east where the night had already fallen on the gap between the mountains that led into the heart of the Desert of Kaph.

  The sisters were silent for a long while. The horses moved on the grass, making the occasional clicking noise as tooth met tooth or hoof touched stone. The fire crackled in homely gold and red. And then Pali said, thoughtfully, “I am seeking an injustice to right, that I may prove myself worthy of the second veil and my sword.”

  She had left on her veils, but Arzu could see from her eyes that she was smiling, and in some small embarrassment of her own desires and ambitions and ancient taboos, she said, “The sword you seek to earn is one of great renown.”

  Pali nodded judiciously. “It is permitted to have a guide.”

  “The first mastery I have attained; the second is rarer, and requires one to win a new pattern.”

  “The heart of the desert,” said Pali, “is the source of the wind.”

  And so the next morning the sisters rode east to enquire of the gods what wrong was done to their sister, that she cried marble tears of anguish.