I

It was raining in Roisinan.

The Kheldrini ship glided into the harbor of Calabra at twilight, with the first torches already guttering under sheltering roofs streaming with water. The air was rich, damp, cool, filled with the sharp, brittle smell of autumn which opened the floodgates of memory and released a torrent of small, exquisitely painful recollections into Anghara's mind. As she had found it difficult to believe that anything other than the yellow sand of Arad Khajir'i'id lay beyond the mountains that sundered the desert from the sea, so now she found it equally hard to think that there was anything else in the world except this wet autumn evening on the shores of Roisinan. There was a lump in her throat which she couldn't quite seem to swallow as she stepped off the ship, dressed decorously Roisinan-fashion and wrapped in what had once been Kieran's cloak, the same one she had taken from Cascin and treasured carefully throughout her years in Bresse and the Twilight Country —her Kheldrini finery she carried bundled up in a parcel in her hand. Home. She was home. Everything about this place she knew, she remembered, it was all stamped soul-deep into her; she forgot for the moment, lost in the sheer joy of it, why she had fled Roisinan, and the cage she had once seen hanging in a street of this very town.

She stood motionless for an instant, lifting her face into the drizzling rain much as Kieran had been wont to do back in Cascin, and for the same reason —in the past two years Anghara had not seen water often, rain least of all. The few violent desert storms that had come her way had been a far cry from what she revelled in now —and she had all but forgotten the feel of raindrops on her skin. Her eyes were closed in a kind of rapture, and her face, if she had only stopped to think about it, was full in the light of a nearby torch, underneath a half-drawn hood that offered little concealment. A man standing a few paces away, talking to the captain of another ship which had come into harbor almost at the same time as Anghara's and had berthed alongside, glanced casually at the passenger who had just come off the Kheldrini vessel, and then looked again, narrowing his eyes in sudden interest. Before Anghara had opened her eyes and moved away from the quayside, the man had abruptly excused himself from his friend and stood waiting in the shadows. When Anghara walked away from her ship and into Calabra to look for food and shelter, he followed her at a judicious distance.

She did not choose the hostelry where ai'Jihaar had taken her on her last sojourn in this place. That held too many memories, even for her; and it was a place where the Kheldrini traders often stayed when in Roisinan. Anghara wanted to reconnect to Roisinan, not wallow in memories of Kheldrin; she picked a sturdy Roisinani inn just off the quay. She even had plans of joining the common room crowd for a while, listening to the sound of her own tongue, not heard since she left Calabra two years before—if one didn't count ai'Jihaar in the beginning, or al'Jezraal's own surprising, Shaymir-gleaned prowess. But once the landlord's buxom wife showed her into her room, the lure of the narrow bed proved too strong. Anghara hadn't realized how tired she was, how much emotion could drain one's strength, and she had been living on little else but emotion, culminating with tonight, ever since she had sailed from Sa'alah. There would be time —there would be time for everything. For now, a jaw-cracking yawn reminded her that the best thing to start with would be a good night's sleep; she yielded with good grace, leaving the common room for another time.

Her dreams were strange, laced with odd premonitions of which she could only recall the sense but not the substance when she woke the following morning. She brooded on them for as long as it took her to dress and get ready to step outside and begin reclaiming Roisinan, only to dismiss them as she closed the door of her room behind her. A pale sun was shining from a washed-out sky, the air crisp and cool from last night's rain; the day was full of promise. Anghara breathed deeply of it, touching again the edges of last night's joy, tasting it as though it was sweet wine —and then, gray eyes determined, she set her mind sternly on what lay ahead.

The first order of business was the purchase of a horse. Anghara spared a swift, regretful thought for the gray dun she had ridden into Sa'alah —his owner, the yellow-eyed young man from Kharg'in'dun'an, had said that nothing she would ever ride afterward would match that mount. She set out in the direction where, according to the landlord, lay a posting stables which might offer a far more ordinary beast for sale.

She had left her premonitions behind in her room, but on this bright, innocent morning she could not get rid of a prickling between her shoulder blades. Several times she turned sharply, but never saw anything untoward behind her, and hated herself for waking this suspicion so soon.

What if someone recognized her?

Fool, she chided herself, after yet another glance behind. The years in Kheldrin, and before that the years in Bresse… Who is likely to recognize you after all this time?

But the feeling persisted. Perhaps because of it, she was far too eager to conclude the deal for the horse —to be out of this place, with its invisible eyes. The stable owner sensed her urgency, and got away with far more than he would if Anghara's full attention had been on the bargaining. Nevertheless, she walked out of the stables as the owner of a quiet bay mare; the mare had cast a shoe the previous day, however, and it was agreed she would be delivered to Anghara's inn after she'd received the required attention from the smith.

Outside, the inexplicable menace had thickened. Anghara shivered as she stood for a moment at the stable's door, raking the street with anxious eyes. Still nothing, still nobody.

"I can leave as soon as I get the mare," she murmured to herself, more to reassure herself by the sound of her voice than anything else. "In the meantime… it's probably best to go back to the inn… and wait."

She stepped off the threshold into the street, and a few quick, cautious steps took her around the corner. The apprehension which beat in her had put a furtiveness in her step which she had to consciously quash, if she didn't want to find herself thought of as guilty by suspicion. Every so often she caught herself looking like an escaping thief, anxious to avoid detection. "There's nobody out there," she told herself firmly. "Nobody."

But there was.

Not behind her, but ahead. Even as she lifted her eyes, she recognized the youth who had paused to glance at her on the other side of the street with a sudden pang of knowledge which made her heart miss a beat.

Adamo! Or was it Charo… She never had been able to tell them apart at first sight…

But even as she straightened, her eyes wide, her hand half raised in a motion of greeting, it was too late. A quiet step behind her was her only warning; even as she began to turn, an arm slid around her waist and yanked her into an archway that opened into the street. Another hand, bearing a rag drenched with something pungent, clapped over her mouth and nose. It all happened too fast —she didn't have a chance to reach for the power that could have saved her. Before she lost consciousness she was dimly aware of the hand holding the rag none too gently pinching shut her nose while someone held a vial of some noxious-tasting liquid to her lips. She swallowed convulsively, gasping for air, before her conscious mind had a chance to refuse. The drug, for some kind of a drug it had to be, was potent and took effect almost immediately, spreading in a slow liquid fire into her bloodstream.

Somewhere deep inside her something was laughing hysterically. Hama dan ar'i'id, a small voice chanted; you are never alone in the desert. And she had behaved in the streets of Calabra with that dictum in mind. But she was no longer in the desert, and she had paid for her carelessness. She thought she shaped a few syllables in a dying voice — Adamo… Charo… help me —but the cry remained in her mind, and she finally went limp, collapsing into the arms of her captors as she slid into unconsciousness.

They had been quiet and professional, and they had not drawn any attention to themselves —it had almost looked as though Anghara had stepped backward into the archway herself. But there had been six of them; Adamo saw them all, and he was alone. It would have been foolhardy to attempt a rescue, especially here in the streets of Sif's harbor city against soldiers wearing Sif's colors beneath their concealing cloaks. But without a doubt it was Anghara. The relentless search for his foster sister had been the kernel around which Kieran's small band of rebels had formed. These were proving a hard nut for Sif to crack, simply because he could never find them. There was a danger, simply by standing on the street and showing he had seen what had happened, that Adamo might well draw unwelcome attention onto himself, and by inference onto Kieran's group —Anghara's only chance of rescue. So he hunched his shoulders, lowered his eyes and hurried on. He didn't need to follow the men who had seized Anghara. There could be only one place they meant to take her.

Copyright © 2002 by Alma Hromic