The Warrior of the Third Veil Read online

  “I held no weapons but my hands. Three stones had I brought to the journey, fool’s gold against the Scorpion-men, jade to anchor the bridge across the hidden crevasse, a desert rose as a gift to the eagle. My sister Arzu held her threads, and she ran to my sister Sardeet to aid her in her birthing. I cried out my warning to the Lord of the Blue Wind, and then I subdued him.”

  She took a deep breath, marshalling words to describe the next moments, which were full of glory and pain and holy fear and awe, and she said: “His life was in my hands when my sister Sardeet-savarel gave birth, and my sister Arzu the weaver caught the one born in her mortal hands. Before the heart might beat seven times no infant was there, but the one named by my sister Arvoliin, the Flame of the Fire of Love, newest of the gods but not their least.

  “In my anger that the Blue Wind had sought to destroy his son, to prevent this divinity from entering the world and granting who knows what miracles, fulfilling only the Greatest of All knows what destiny—in my wonder and my fear and my wrath—I killed him. With my hands I broke his neck.”

  She paused again. No one was smiling now at all, not even Lord Andrej. The air was cold.

  “And then I took the bones of the six dead wives home to their kindred, that their ghosts might be laid to rest and their spirits free to go to the next life, and having completed those journeys I come here in supplication.”

  And, as other Warriors had done before her, she knelt before the Masters, bowed her head, and waited.

  Eight

  SHE WAS STILL KNEELING there when the Warriors, novices and Veiled and Masters alike, filed out of the hall for the evening activities, and still kneeling there at dawn when they filed back in for the first meal. They were still quiet, though now the whispers were hard to suppress, and little spurts of conversation came from those seated at the long tables behind her.

  Finally Master Azaiah rose. The room fell instantly silent.

  “Paliammë-ivanar, Warrior of the First Veil,” said her master, and Pali looked up. Over the long night she had come to a quiet place, where she felt her heart at ease.

  She had chosen one way around Ialaar the wishing stone: and who knew but that she had not chosen the side that went to being a Warrior of the Second Veil, and a place at her sister’s right hand, and perhaps a husband and a family of her own, and the long arduous training that would see her one day take the Third Veil, and perhaps even the Fourth, and come to teach here in the Mountain.

  In her heart she knew she had not taken that path.

  None of the other supplicants for the Ceremony of the Second Veil had required a full night’s deliberation by the Masters. They had told their tales, and the acclamation of the room of their peers and their masters had spoken forth their new status before the sash and the sword were even brought forward from the treasure rooms.

  “Paliammë-ivanar,” her master said again. “We have deliberated on your account of your quest, and on your request to be elevated to the rank of a Warrior of the Second Veil. I think you know that your quest did not follow the approved path, that you did not resolve the injustice you found without violence, and that by taking a life you failed to fulfil the requirements of the Second Veil. According to the ancient traditions of the Mountain, therefore, you are to be cast out from our number, forbidden to wear the Veils, and if you carry a sword it will not be as a Warrior of the Mountain.”

  The silence in the hall was utter. Pali met the grave eyes of her master as steadily as she could, and then she bowed until her forehead touched the cold stone of the floor. At least, she thought with an effort at humour, the humiliation would hide her face until she could govern it.

  Seven heartbeats she counted, face throbbing hot against the stone, forty people staring silently at her, before Master Azaiah said, “Paliammë-ivanar,” a third time.

  Pali swallowed hard and lifted her head, hoping her tears would not fall, knowing that two years going about veiled had done nothing to help her learn to keep her emotions hidden, knowing that she had only her pride in accepting the consequences of her actions left to her. She would hold her head high, leaving, she thought; she had known in attacking the Scorpion-Men that she might be losing her future, let alone when she launched herself at Olu-olurin with every intention of violence.

  Master Azaiah did not meet her eyes. She gestured instead to the grey-robed man beside her. “Our honoured guest wishes to ask you certain questions.”

  Pali bowed to the ancient Warrior. He waited, gazing steadily at her, and finally she cleared her throat and said: “Lord Andrej, I am here.” Her voice was rough, but she kept the tears back, and kept her hands flat and relaxed on her knee. Her mother would be so ashamed when Pali returned her great-grandmother’s sword to the family tent.

  Lord Andrej smiled with the same tenderness he had showed her the night before. When he spoke his voice was soft and dry.

  “Where did you go in your travels, returning the bones of the dead?”

  Pali blinked at him, swallowed hard. “I returned Nwayë the Swift to the Honey-Eaters of Rish. Aulai of the Snow to the Isle of the Swans. Mei Song to the Emperor-of-the-Yellow-Throne in the Pearl Islands, across the salt sea. Dhava to the Yrchainné of the foothills of north Ihilain. Eijian the Fair to the lands under the Crown-of-Heaven.”

  Those were Lord Andrej’s own lands, under the great flaming lights of the winter sky, which he himself had brought back from the lair of the greatest of the ice dragons, who had stolen all the fire of the land for his own keeping. Pali smiled, wanly but genuinely, at the thought that she had heard the tales of Lord Andrej and the Dragons, and now she spoke before him: shamed she might be but that gift she had.

  “And Imröd-imardel I returned to the southern desert. Those are the names of the dead I returned home.”

  There was a murmur then, in the silent hall. It rose and fell like the tiny wind that heralded the coming of the rains in the desert.

  Lord Andrej nodded his head slowly. “What did the young god say to you?”

  Pali swallowed. “Be joyous.”

  There was another murmur, rather louder, in the hall. Master Azaiah raised her hand, and the noise faded away.

  Lord Andrej spoke quietly. “What will you do?”

  It seemed monstrously unfair that she should have to decide now. She thought of Sardeet throwing off her widow’s white for bridal scarlet and running off into the west after a knife-thrower, and hope. She thought of what she had seen in her vision-quest, the sword in her hand and the joy in her heart as she fought with strange companions in stranger places; and the fact that she had worn no veils in those visions, had worn instead blue and yellow and crimson and green.

  Pali looked down at the white spots on her right hand from the fight in the tunnel against the Scorpion-Men. Arzu had come out with hair white as starlight; Pali with the stars glittering on her cheek, her arm, her side, her leg, her hand, her foot. She swallowed.

  “I will return my great-grandmother’s sword to my mother’s tent, and then I will see where my road takes me.”

  She paused, and thought of herself and Sardeet riding around and around the practice-grounds outside the city of Rin; but in the face of the silent hall and the disappointment of the Masters she could not voice the longing for glory and adventure and renown that she would not be winning as a Warrior of the Mountain.

  But still ... she had chosen the road East, and there was always ... She looked up into the eyes of Lord Andrej, and then met Master Azaiah’s as carefully.

  “I chose to take the road East,” she said, as clearly as she could, her voice ringing out into the air. “No one returns along the same path from that journey. I accept the consequences.”

  Master Azaiah looked very grave.

  “One more,” said Lord Andrej: “If the Wind Lords called you, would you go?”

  The answer leapt to her tongue without any hesitation. “With all my heart.”

  Lord Andrej looked to the five Masters and inclined his head. “My advice stands.”

  Master Azaiah stood up and gestured again for silence in the hall. “Lord Andrej; my fellow Masters; Warriors; novices; supplicant. You have heard the tale unfolded by Paliammë-ivanar of the Middle Desert of the Oclaresh, Warrior of the First Veil. You have heard the response of our deliberations, that she has failed in the requirements to attain the Second Veil. You have heard Lord Andrej’s questions, and our daughter’s answers. You have also,” and her voice warmed a little, as she made a kind of wry smile, “I think all of you, have come, one by one or in small parties, to the door of the Masters’ conclave to say your piece about the tale and the judgment you thought appropriate. As a result of all these things, and in consultation with the annals of the Mountain and in prayers to the gods, we have come to a further decision. Paliammë-ivanar, will you stand?”

  Pali unfolded herself from her kneeling and stood with her hands at her sides. She wished again for veil and sash and robes, with a sick uncertainty, and wished also that they had just let her go.

  Master Azaiah gestured to Master Ilkhure, whose skill at unarmed combat was legendary, and who had been Pali’s secondary teacher. He stood, and took a dark bundle from the novice who was attending him. Master Azaiah smiled.

  “Paliammë-ivanar, it is the will of the Masters that you be offered the Third Veil for your courage, your resolution, and your deeds. You have taken the road East, and returned: that you do not pass in order from First Veil to Second is no surprise. What say you?”

  Pali’s shocked whisper of assent was drowned in the cheer that rose from the Warriors of the Mountain, and she wept all through the Ceremony of the Third Veil, though not so much she could not whisper her thanksgiving to Lord Andrej when he presented her with her great-grandmother’s sword.

  “Bear it with honour—and joy,” he said.

  “I shall,” promised Pali.

  He paused, and then he said, so softly that only Master Azaiah, standing beside her, heard his next words: “I think one day you will see the heart of the holy desert, for the Twelve have need, on occasion, of one who will stand against evil at the cost of her own heart’s desire.”

  Pali did not know what to say, and so bowed.

  He smiled, a touch sadly. “You said you will see where your road takes you. I fear it will take you farther yet from the tents of your kin than you can imagine. I hope that what you gain will outweigh that loss.”

  “Your name is sung loud in the lands under the Crown-of-Heaven,” said Pali.

  “And when I was young I saw Eijian the Fair taken by the Blue Wind in a summer meadow, and though our lands sickened in grief for her loss it was not I who returned her home,” he said.

  “But you did return summer,” said Pali, and he laughed.

  “So I did: and much glory and few friends did I receive for it! Come now, you are hungry and your friends wish to congratulate you on the indigo and blue, and I am an old man who has seen too many things.”

  Master Azaiah nodded and made to offer her arm to Lord Andrej, but something made Pali stay her with a gesture. She walked up and embraced the ancient Warrior formally, kissing him on both cheeks with enormous gratitude and a sudden upwelling of love. “May my sister’s son, Arvoliin the Flame of the Fire of Love, grant you a warm heart and a welcoming hearth,” she said, “and joy in the morning when you wake in the light you returned to the world, and rest in the night that is no longer dread.”

  Lord Andrej paused, evidently startled, for Pali spoke with a conviction not solely her own. Pali herself found her heart lifting, and a warm wind blew suddenly through the hall, sending the lamp-flames streaming gold and white, and a soft laugh was heard by many.

  The party that followed was considered by many the finest the Mountain had seen in many a year.

  Nine

  PALI STAYED IN THE Mountain for three months, re-training with weapons and becoming accustomed to her great-grandmother’s sword. It took her much of that time to grow accustomed to the sight of the long blue sash around her waist.

  She had several long conversations with Lord Andrej. He no longer fought, but sat instead in the shade of the orchard trees watching others train. She dared not ask what brought him to the Mountain in their discussions of her travels and his suggestions for her fighting, but one day, when she paused between bouts to drink water from the pitcher left near him, he beckoned her over.

  “Lord Andrej,” she said, bowing.

  “Paliammë-ivanar.”

  At his gesture she seated herself next to him, laying her sword carefully across her lap. He nodded at it. “What is the tale of your great-grandmother’s sword?”

  “My mother is the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh,” Pali began after a moment. “She won the Third Veil from defeating the djinni Ondariin.”

  “I have heard that tale,” said Lord Andrej.

  “My mother will be honoured.” Pali stroked her fingers down the gentle curve of the sword. “My mother’s mother was the Bandit Queen before her. She did not train as a Warrior, but went to the weavers in the south; my elder sister Arzu-aldizar followed her path, learning the arts of healing and of knotting thread.” She paused again. “My sister will be Queen after my mother, all our clan looks to it.”

  Lord Andrej smiled gently at her, much the same way as he had when he said he hoped her path would not lead her too far from the tents of her family. She thought once again of the Crown-of-Heaven, the blazing glory of the northern lights above the snow and ice of his family lands. Tried, and failed, to imagine what it would be like to walk into the ice dragons’ lairs seeking for fire and the summer that had been stolen.

  “My great-grandmother was called Ulura-urzinar, the Flower of Time. She did not train as a Warrior; was a wise one of the desert, deeply knowledgeable in the ways of the wild. In the days when the sun was stolen away by the ice dragons, a false sun shone over the southern lands. He was a liar, and brought much evil into the world, for he brought pestilence, madness, and soul-sickness to those who stood in his light. When you went into the dark lands to fetch home the summer, my great-grandmother went into the holy desert to find the Water of Truth. You brought forth the true Sun, and climbed up the stairs of the sky to return him home. My great-grandmother it was who cut down the false sun and brought rain back to the world when she poured out the ewer she had filled at the well at the heart of the world.”

  Pali lifted the hilt of her sword, which was bound with old leather made hard and black with many hands. “This is the sword that cut down the sun.”

  The ancient warrior said nothing for a good long while, and then he said: “I passed your great-grandmother on the stairs of heaven: she coming down as I was going up.”

  There was another long silence, and then Pali said: “My great-grandmother never wed. She had only one child, my grandmother, born with the autumn rains after that great drought.”

  Master Azaiah came over to ask Pali if she would return to the practice grounds, and saw to her great astonishment that Lord Andrej was weeping and laughing and holding Pali’s hands with an expression of such joy she was staggered.

  But the rumours that went round the Mountain halls that evening gladdened the hearts of many, who had feared the loneliness of the road that the ancient warrior had followed, and that Pali had set her feet upon.

  WHEN PALI RETURNED again to the tents of her people, she arrived after sunset, when her indigo robes looked black and her sky-blue sash could have been any colour. She was, moreover, accompanied by Lord Andrej, who had come to meet the kin he had never thought to know.

  It was the first day of the full moon, and as was the custom they were feasting. It was a mild evening, and the walls of the Bandit Queen’s great tent were rolled up to admit the cool breezes. Carpets were piled high and lanterns of wrought silver hung from the cross-beams, and the clan wore their jewels and their fine robes with pride.

  Pali dismounted first and carefully assisted Lord Andrej off his palfrey. He smiled at her in gratitude, and Pali, still holding his hand, led him to her mother.

  Her mother looked at Pali’s light-coloured sash and the sword at her side, and smiled in satisfaction and approval. Then she nodded. “Daughter, do you bring us a guest to our tent?”

  “I bring home a kinsman to us,” said Pali, who was bursting with joy to tell them. “Lord Andrej of the Vaarno is he who fetched home the Sun from the ice dragons, and while he was climbing the stairs of the sky he met coming down the Flower of Time. He has been seeking news of his lover these many years since, and home have I brought him.”

  There was, of course, little mention made of Pali’s accomplishment in the face of this news. Lord Andrej thought once or twice of correcting assumptions, but he saw how Pali chose to efface herself behind him or behind her sister Arzu-aldizar, and so he was silent and thought he would let the true light of the sun show her Veils to her family the next morning.

  THERE WAS A YOUNG MAN of the clan named Hasim, a trainer of falcons who had earned much wealth and a good name through his hunting, who had thought long and hard of what he might offer Paliammë-ivanar as a token of his intention. He had not spoken of his hopes in the three days Pali had spent at home before seeking the Mountain, but he thought she would not look amiss on his suit, for they had been much together as children before she left for the Warriors.

  The morning after her return he decided he must not wait, for Pali seemed restless as one of his falcons, and he feared she would set off on yet another journey before he had a chance to speak his mind. He woke in the steel light before dawn to ready therefore the finest of his birds, a pure white gyrfalcon from the north, with jesses of silver and scarlet leather, and prepared in his mind the words he would say.

  He walked through the waking encampment to the Queen’s tent. The Queen’s two daughters were starting the cook fire and sharing their news. Arzu was four months pregnant, radiant with her marriage to Mehaan, the clan’s blacksmith; Hasim thought it a great chance that brought him to Pali when she was full of joy for her sister’s marriage.