The Warrior of the Third Veil Read online

  The Warrior of the Third Veil

  Victoria Goddard

  Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Goddard

  All rights reserved.

  First published by Underhill Books.

  ISBN:

  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.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  The Warrior of the Third Veil

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Author’s Note

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  Further Reading: Stargazy Pie

  Also By Victoria Goddard

  About the Author

  The Warrior of the Third Veil

  In the cities along the river Ihil, the nomad tribes of the Middle Desert are almost as legendary as the gods. Sardeet is the youngest daughter of the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh, but her father was a man of the city, and after her husband's death, he brings her to her uncle to recover from her grief.

  She walks veiled and silent, as befits one who is rumoured to be the widow of a god, and the people of the city whisper about how beautiful she must be for those rumours to be abroad. They generally dismiss the other part of the story, that the reason her husband is dead is because her sister killed him.

  Sardeet's sister Pali, however, knows that this is true—and that there are consequences.

  The Warrior of the Third Veil is the second story of those about the Sisters Avramapul. It takes place after The Bride of the Blue Wind. While you do not need to have read The Bride of the Blue Wind, you will probably enjoy this one better having done so.

  One

  EACH OF THE CITIES along the Ihil had their specialty. Vador traded in woven hangings, and Likkaan in spices, and Oclaresh City in gold. The city of Rin was the home of the stoneworkers.

  ALDIZAR AQ NAARUN AQ Lo was a man of Rin. He was an artist, a sculptor in stone, and before he had heard rumours of the beauty of Lonar Avramapul the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh he had had no desire to travel, had never slept the night in a tent, had never ridden a camel. He had sat in the stone house of his fathers, and carved little figurines of people, until the stories of the beauty and the wit and the strength of Lonar Avramapul drew him away from the green banks of the Ihil and out into the dun desert that at first he did not find beautiful.

  Lonar Avramapul found him wandering, lost, desert-blind, thirsty. She took him back to her encampment in pity and hospitality, and when he had healed of sunstroke and fear he asked for stones and chisels, and out of the malachite she brought him he carved his love for her, and she permitted him to live.

  For one-and-twenty years he was consort to the Bandit Queen in the desert, and only returned to the city on three occasions, to make the great sacrifice in the temple of Rin when each of his daughters were born.

  The cities along the Ihil were afraid of the nomads of the Middle Desert, and passed their property down the male line. They required dowries to marry their sons to daughters, and a man who had only daughters was considered something of a fool (and soon to be poor). They did not know the bride-price Aldizar aq Naarun aq Lo had paid to Lonar Avramapul, and they smiled when he made his sacrifices for thanksgiving at the births of his daughters.

  For seventeen years his brother lived in their father’s house, and endured the ribbing for having a brother who had only daughters, and lived on his wife’s land, and brought no dowry of orchards or gardens or quarries to the city.

  One-and-twenty years after the birth of his first daughter, seventeen after his third, Aldizar returned to his father’s house.

  When he rode into Rin he came in style, with seventeen horses and forty-one milk-white camels behind him, bearing the work of two decades and his daughter’s current possessions. He came attended by nomads in their long robes, with short bows of lacquered wood and sinew on their backs, falcons on their wrists, curved swords at their waists. Their robes were bronze and sky-blue and maroon, their sashes scarlet and yellow and green, and to the people of the city they were terrifying.

  But they forgot their fear, for in the midst of the procession, beside her father on a horse the colour of gold, rode a woman dressed in widow’s white, her face completely veiled.

  Even in the city they had heard the rumours that the youngest daughter of the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh had been taken by one of the Wind Lords to be his bride, and returned three years later a widow.

  ALDIZAR AQ NAARUN AQ Lo led his daughter to the gracious stone house of his father’s family. His elder brother had inherited it. Naarun aq Naarun aq Lo was a carver of stone traceries, and he had married the daughter of a temple priest for a dowry of three date-palm orchards and two horses. Naarun and Ania had two sons, at this time fifteen and thirteen, and no daughters, and Naarun liked to tell stories of his brother who had married the desert; but only once had he gone there to visit. He had not liked the tents, or the sand, or the open spaces, or the wind, or the fierce-eyed women with swords in their hands.

  Naarun’s major-domo bowed when Aldizar and the veiled woman stopped before the door. The horses and the camels and the nomads and half the citizens of Rin spooled out behind them, watching. The major-domo spoke carefully. “Noble sir, on what business do you approach this house?”

  “I am Aldizar aq Naarun aq Lo,” replied he, “come to beg hospitality of my brother for my daughter and myself.”

  “The master waits within,” replied the major-domo. “The servants will take your horses.”

  Aldizar took his daughter’s hand and led her silently through the stone house to the back courtyard, where Naarun waited with his wife and their two sons. Aldizar bowed to his brother, and Naarun bowed back, and offered him wine, and they sat there drinking and not speaking for some time. The sons stared hard at the cousin who sat silently beside their uncle, wondering if behind the veils were truly a woman of such beauty the gods had chosen her for their own, and whether it was true that her sister had killed one of the Wind Lords for some dreadful injustice done to her. Naarun’s wife Ania smiled kindly.

  Finally Naarun spoke. “It has been many years since last you came to visit.”

  “And too many since you last came to me, my brother. How goes the city?”

  “Much as always. The traders come and the traders go, and old buildings are repaired and new buildings are built. Rumours come down the wind from the desert, and down the river from the mountains, and on the lips of men from every land. How goes the desert?”

  “The grazing has been good and the flocks have multiplied, and there have been many fools for my wife to hunt.”

  They drank their wine. Ania smiled at the veiled woman. Naarun’s sons tried not to fidget as they stared. She sat utterly still.

  At length Aldizar said, “My youngest daughter returned from her husband a widow, the child of her womb gone, and we thought it might be best she spent some time away from the wind out of the mountains.”

  “This is the house of your fathers,” replied Naarun. “She is welcome here.”

  THEY CALLED THE NOMAD widow the Bride of the Wind, and since no one had seen her face the rumours of her beauty ran loud as the river in its flood. She herself did not speak. Aldizar spent a month in the city, selling his sculptures and greeting his friends, before the hard stones and the chatter and the crowds pushed him back into the quiet subtleties of the desert. He left behind five hors
es and forty-one camels and three of the nomad outriders, who were much taken by the admiring glances of the women of the city, and who had sworn on their lives to protect Sardeet-savarel, youngest daughter of their queen, in her grief.

  Apart from the weekly services at the temple, where she knelt unspeaking beside Ania in the women’s portion, and whether she prayed or not no one could see behind her veil, Sardeet-savarel did not leave her uncle’s house. She spent three months sitting by the fountain in the courtyard, staring at the water over the green and yellow tiles from Issuol to the north.

  Ania had never seen a woman sit so still; the women of the cities spun and wove and cooked and cleaned and shopped and gardened, and she had presumed that the fierce women of the desert would do more, not less. But she thought she understood the clouds that hung over her niece, and she did not press her.

  In the city the rumours multiplied, spun out of stories from the odd traveller who had seen the Bandit Queen or her eldest daughter hunting in the desert, from the old legends of the mortals who had caught the eye of the gods, and from the sheer blankness of the white veils and the silence.

  THREE MONTHS AND THREE days after Sardeet-savarel had arrived, a lone rider approached the city. He rode a black horse with trappings of scarlet and silver, and wore the flowing black robes and veils of a Warrior of the Mountains. The Warriors did not often come into the cities along the river: they were legends near as wild as the Wind Lords and the tales of the ancient days.

  Between his headscarf and face-veils they could see dark eyes lined with kohl, black, steady, calculating. He bore no visible weapons. He did not speak, and seemed to know his way. Almost as many people turned out to see the Warrior ride through the streets as had come to see the procession bringing the Bride of the Wind to her uncle’s home.

  To no one’s surprise, the Warrior took the same route, and ended at the same door.

  The major-domo was as polite as he had been to the grand procession, though fear underlaid his bow and his words. “Noble one,” he said, his knees quivering and his mouth dry, for his grandmother was from the southern desert and had sung him many stories about what the Warriors could do, “what brings you to this house?”

  “I come to see the Bride of the Wind,” said the Warrior, in a low voice muffled by his veils.

  “On ... on what business?”

  “Her own.” The warrior gave him a golden comb as a token, and the major-domo, with a bow of deepest respect, led him to a seat inside the entry-hall, and went in to consult with his master.

  WHEN SARDEET-SAVAREL was given the comb and the news that a black-clad Warrior of the Mountains had come for her, she rose immediately from the women’s quarters and went to the courtyard fountain, and so, with confused glances at his wife, Naarun bade the major-domo bring the Warrior in to see her.

  Ania and Naarun stayed as chaperones, though what they could do should the Warrior choose to flout polite behaviour they had no idea. They watched the two come together, the young woman in full white veils and the young man in black. They were of much the same height, and Ania looked again at the shape of the body beneath the black clothes, and wondered.

  The Bride of the Wind reached out her hands in supplication, and the Warrior took them and said, “My sister, it is done.”

  Sardeet-savarel cried out in a piercing voice the high ululation of grief and triumph and loss, and then she collapsed into the Warrior’s arms, sobbing.

  And then it was that Naarun remembered the stories of how it was that the Bride of the Wind had become a widow.

  Two

  IT WAS ANIA WHO DARED offer hospitality.

  The Warrior accepted it gravely, and they stared at each other for a moment. Sardeet-savarel sat on the edge of the fountain, head leaning against the Warrior’s side. Ania couldn’t tell from the kohl-lined eyes or the low voice whether the Warrior was man or woman. Even among the citified tribes it was not permissible to ask for a name between the offer of hospitality and the breaking of bread.

  Sardeet-savarel suddenly gripped the Warrior’s hand and spoke. Her voice was hoarse; she had uttered no words but her sobs for three months or more. “Will you take off your veils?”

  The Warrior looked down at her. “Will you?”

  Sardeet-savarel did not answer, but stood, and pulled the Warrior back into the women’s quarters with her. Her movements were lighter than they had been, swifter, stronger.

  Ania and her husband looked at each other after the door closed behind the woman in white and the one in black.

  “I hope,” said Naarun, “that the Warrior is indeed her sister.”

  “The rumours are already thick as swallows in the fall,” Ania replied, and hastened to the kitchen to arrange a feast in honour of the guest to their table.

  AT THE EVENING MEAL in Naarun’s house were: Naarun and his wife; their two sons; Naarun’s apprentice Sol, and for the last two weeks, also Ania’s brother Khalun and his wife Saara, and their son Khalef, who was eighteen and soon to take his place as a temple priest in Oclaresh City down the river. Sardeet-savarel had only joined them occasionally, for she did not eat in public with her veils, but the three nomad guards often did, along with Ania’s handmaiden and the major-domo, and they, of course, were there tonight.

  The arrival of any Warrior would have been of the greatest interest, but with the prospect of a woman warrior—the second daughter of the Bandit Queen, no less—all the household were buzzing with rumours and stories. The three nomad guards were queried, and they smiled and said that yes, the second daughter of the Bandit Queen had taken the Veils, and no, they had not seen the horse or its rider and did not know if this Warrior were she. But of course everyone then went to the stables to consider the horse, and it was decided that the splendid animal was indeed out of the Avramapul herds.

  So of course there was much excitement. But underlying it all was the ravening curiosity, held barely in check by Ania’s cheerful demeanour as she helped arrange cushions and low tables and couches for all the party, about what exactly Sardeet-savarel looked like.

  Shortly before the dinner-gong was sounded Naarun and his wife stopped together in the courtyard. The three boys—their sons and nephew—were huddled in the upper gallery, whispering, and looking down at the door to the women’s quarters.

  “I am worried about her,” he confessed. “She cannot be so lovely as all that. And the people ...”

  Ania straightened the hang of his robes with a fond familiar gesture. “Dear husband,” she replied, “when you came back from seeing the Bandit Queen who stole your brother’s heart away from the city, you told me that if she was like the Spring incarnate.”

  He looked down at her. “I prefer the heart on my own hearth,” he said, and his wife smiled and shook her head.

  The gong sounded, and they made the young men go in, and seated themselves around the table, with a place at Naarun’s right hand for the Warrior and one at Ania’s left for Sardeet-savarel. The few minutes they waited before the sisters entered were long ones, and then the nomads, who had been standing by the door, flung themselves down on one knee in homage to the daughters of their queen.

  Unveiled, the Warrior was a young woman in a simple black robes, her hair covered in a black headscarf, her waist sashed with black. Her eyes were lined with kohl, and steady as a falcon. She was beautiful as the desert just before dawn.

  Beside her in white, unbound waist-length hair glinting like a raven’s wing, sallow with the months of her veiling, but with a faint wash of pink starting in her cheeks; with grief in her face and fire in her eyes, Sardeet-savarel was the dawn.

  NO QUESTIONS WERE PERMITTED until they had shared salt and wine. After the bowl of scented water for washing fingers had been passed around, left to left, Naarun took the flat bread from the basket, broke it, and sprinkled salt over its face, and with a gesture older than the city presented it to the Warrior. With a gesture of equal antiquity, the Warrior ripped a piece and ate it, and passed the bread
to the person on her right, who was Ania’s brother Khalun.

  Once the bread had been passed around the whole gathering, Naarun took up the flask of wine, and poured it into the great guesting-cup. This he passed to the Warrior, who drank and again passed it to her right.

  Once the wine had made its circuit, the servants brought out the food. Normally the conversation would begin at this point, but everyone was eager to hear the name of this woman Warrior, and the story that had brought Sardeet-savarel out of her veils. As their guest was a Warrior, though a woman, Naarun began with the traditional words.

  “Child of the road,” he said, “you have asked hospitality at our hearth, and we have given you salt and wine and three days under our roof, though you should be enemy of our house. Now we ask in return, what name do you bear, and who are your kin, and what journey do you take that brings you to our hearth?”

  The Warrior smiled, and with a glance at Sardeet-savarel, said: “I am Paliammë-ivanar Avramapul, second daughter of Lonar Avramapul of the Oclaresh and Aldizar aq Naarun aq Lo of this house. I am a Warrior of the First Veil, and I have come to my sister with news that concerns her.”

  Naarun paused in a bit of consternation. “You are welcome to the house of your fathers as long as you wish to stay.”

  She inclined her head graciously. “You do honour to your kin.”

  There was a strong buzz from the assembly. Without her veils she looked like an ordinary woman, except that Ania saw several white spots on the right side of her face, as if a spray of sparks glittered there.

  “The daughters of my brother are welcome to my house,” Naarun said, and offered her a plate of spiced lamb.

  Sardeet-savarel leaned to Ania and whispered, “I have much to thank you for.”