10,000 Suns

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  Amber Quill Press, LLC

  www.amberquill.com

  Copyright ©2004 by Michelle L. Levigne

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  * * *

  10,000 SUNS

  Book I Of The Bainevah Series

  by

  MICHELLE L. LEVIGNE

  * * * *

  ISBN 1-59279-317-7

  Amber Quill Press, LLC

  www.amberquill.com

  Shadow comes.

  Threads tangle and break.

  Colors spill and fade.

  Warp weights clash and the frame breaks.

  The Tapestry is destroyed by the Ones who give it life.

  The Ram breaks his horns.

  The old Ram attacks those who would free him.

  He scatters fire and burns the land.

  He lies down with the Bull and with the Viper and offers his flesh to his enemies for food.

  The Ram tramples the incense and light scatters.

  Sparks fade in the Shadows.

  The Young Ram will spill the pure blood of the Wise. Ten Thousand Suns will witness.

  After that will come the Flame to the broken Threads, the spilled Colors, the broken Loom.

  Nothing remains beyond the Fire-home.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Reign of King Doni'Jazzan'Nebazz'Dayona

  Thirty-sixth year

  First Descent Moon

  The wounded man had no shadow.

  Challen paused in the tower doorway and stared out into the sun-hot daylight, positive she had been mistaken. Mackal, her father's apprentice, knelt on the hot stones of the courtyard, tending to the wounded stranger. He dusted healing powder into the bronze basin, dipped up hot water from the kettle always steaming over the coals in the courtyard firepit, and carried the basin to the man. He had come in only five, maybe ten minutes ago, saying his horse threw him as he rode into the trading village at the Oasis of Benetheer.

  The stranger's desert robes were dusty, clinging to him with sweat, worn from travel—and who traveled the desert in the middle of the day, in the hottest part of summer, just after solstice? He was alone, and only fools and madmen traveled alone.

  Or men with evil on their minds.

  Challen flinched when Mackal glanced up from washing the man's bleeding leg and called for her. She felt a chill run down her sweaty back when the stranger lifted blank black eyes and gazed at her. The chill turned into a queasiness in her gut when the man smiled, creating black crevices around his too-full mouth, sifting dust from his dirty beard.

  "Do you think we'll need the numbing dust?” Mackal asked. He gestured for her to look at the man's leg, which had bits of grit, wood and even a few pebbles ground into his flesh by the force of his fall.

  "Most definitely.” Challen raked her fingers through her ember-colored hair and retied the head cloth that kept coming undone. In another moment, her hair was covered, neatly tied off her neck, letting the warm afternoon air suck away the sweat almost as it formed.

  "I'm a lucky man, to find a healer and his pretty wife so quickly,” the stranger said.

  "We're not married,” Challen hurried to say.

  "Yet.” Mackal winked at her before turning back to picking the debris out of his patient's leg.

  Four years ago, when Mackal came to apprentice with the healer, Shazzur, Challen might have laughed with him, and let him believe such comments were funny. Four years ago, at age sixteen, she might even have been flattered that such a talented, handsome man was interested in her. In four years, Mackal had hinted too baldly at his desire to marry her, but never spoke directly to her of the matter.

  How could Challen tell him that she would not marry him, when he never outright asked her?

  It didn't help that her father found it amusing.

  Challen looked at the ground one more time, just to be sure of what she had seen. The stranger still had no shadow, though the afternoon sun hung at enough of an angle to throw a distinct, hard-edged shadow. She had a shadow. Mackal had a shadow. The bench the stranger sat on had a shadow. The table full of healing supplies, the courtyard walls, the awning stretching from the doorway, and the tripod holding the kettle over the coals—they all had shadows.

  "I'll fetch the powder.” Challen forced a smile before turning to go into the house.

  She took the winding steps up to the tower three at a time and didn't care that she was dripping wet and gasping in the scorching heat by the time she reached the top. Her sleeveless tunic stuck to her skin and her loose, open-weave trousers tried to climb up her legs. She slipped on the top step, her worn sandal strap breaking at the worst possible moment. A lean, steady, wrinkled hand came from seemingly out of nowhere to grab her arm and keep her upright when she would have fallen.

  "My dear?” Shazzur tugged on her arm and led her to his worktable, gently pushing her down onto the bench.

  "There's a man—with no shadow in—in the courtyard.” Challen shook her head when he would have put a cup of watered wine into her hands.

  "No shadow?” His thick eyebrows rose and gray eyes widened. A smile parted the tangled curls of his silver-streaked red beard. Then the smile turned into a frown. “Fascinating, but not welcome in the least. Come.” He stepped to the wide window that looked down from his tower room, over the courtyard of their house at the edge of the trading village.

  Challen joined her father at the window. The silvery-pink stone of the ledge scorched her hands when she leaned out to look down. At this time of the afternoon, there were no gentle breezes to counter the oppressive heat. She wished everyone had the sense to sleep through the hottest part of the day—including the stranger below. He sat on his bench, leg propped up, watching Mackal fuss with bandages at the table strewn with ingredients for a salve he had been trying to improve for the past three moon quarters. Despite the way the man's dun-colored desert robes draped around him, Challen could clearly see he still had no shadow. She shivered, wondering what it portended.

  "Why can't Mackal see? Surely he isn't that dense?” she muttered.

  "Dense might not be the question, my dear.” Shazzur glanced at Challen, then looked at the stranger again. “He has a shadow."

  "Father—"

  "I do not doubt you. Your mother had many gifts, many ways of seeing, which were beyond my experience. She never told me of seeing anyone without a shadow, but then ... perhaps she never had need of the gift."

  A pot shattered on the paving stones of the courtyard. Challen glanced down again. The stranger was on his feet, moving without a limp, and that sent another chill up her back.

  "Mackal!” she shouted almost before realizing that glint of sun on metal was a knife in the stranger's hand.

  The black-haired, slightly chubby apprentice glanced up at her, then over his shoulder at his mobile patient. He ducked, barely avoiding a downward slash of the knife. He snatched up the first thing that came to hand. Fortunately for him, a bronze platter used for cutting fresh ingredients for his salves. The platter shielded his face.

  Challen darted from the tower room, on Shazzur's heels. Her father's long legs ate up the steps, propelling him downward more quickly than Challen could move. She bit back a cry of warning. Fifteen years of exile at the edge of the desert had not been kind to her father, and he had not been young when they came here. But Shazzur moved as if he were still a young man, spying behind enemy lines in the
stories he had told Challen when she was a child. He snatched up his long, age-blackened staff as he swept through the door and into the courtyard and swung it at the stranger.

  Challen slammed into the doorframe and paused for a few breaths. The stranger had Mackal on the ground, bent over him, trying to stab him and making the bronze platter resound like a gong. Challen wondered why he didn't have the sense to kick Mackal or try for another, easier target. His method of attack made no sense—not that she wanted her father's irritating apprentice hurt.

  Shazzur swung hard with the staff, hitting the stranger behind the knees, and toppled him. The knife sent up sparks as it skipped across the paving stones. The stranger made no sound and picked himself up almost before he finished rolling, as if he had felt nothing.

  All the white had vanished from his eyes. They weren't just big and black, but black pits. As if his skull were empty. Challen shivered, imagining she looked into the darkness of the Netherhells, where the rebel demi-gods had been consigned when the Unseen divided up the world among the deities.

  "Father!” she shouted in warning, as the stranger pulled a sword from under his robes.

  Challen spread her hands, mentally gathering all the heat of the endless afternoon. Eyes narrowing, she sent the heat and the force of her anger into the metal of the sword.

  The man's skin scorched. She heard it sizzle, all the moisture driven out—but he didn't even flinch.

  Fear made her falter, and the stranger advanced four more steps on Shazzur, who calmly waited with his staff held parallel to the paving stones. Challen wasn't going to let the man take a swing at her father. He was once the Seer to the King of Bainevah. He deserved respect for that, if not for his age and his healing talents. No one was allowed to hurt her father. She refocused on the man's chest.

  His robes burst into flames.

  The stranger brushed at the flames like another man would try to flick away flies. Mackal staggered up behind him and swung a bench like a scythe. The stranger went down. Mackal swung again. Challen approved—why take chances, after all?

  * * * *

  "Father?” Challen squeezed a lemon before dropping the wedges into the heavy pottery pitcher of water. The lack of condensation on the outside attested to the dryness of the day, though the water inside was chill, freshly drawn from their deep, echoing well. She poured a cup and brought it over to Shazzur, who sat watching their bound and bandaged prisoner.

  "Thank you, my dear.” Shazzur spared her a tired smile, then turned back to contemplating the unconscious man.

  Mackal had left perhaps ten minutes ago to fetch the commander of the garrison, after helping to salve and bandage the man's burns and tie him to the central support pillar inside the house. The solid stone pillar was wider than a man's arms could clasp, and sunk deep into the ground. Even a madman couldn't knock it loose. Challen had less confidence in the rawhide thongs binding his hands and ankles. She sat down where she could watch, ready to ignite him again if he broke free.

  "He asked for me, specifically, by name,” Shazzur murmured, finally breaking the silence. “Not the Healer. Not even the old man.” He snorted, amused for a moment. “No, he asked for Doni'Hobad'Shazzur'Conia."

  Challen shivered. She hadn't heard her father's full Court-formal name in years.

  "Mackal was, of course, confused. And that didn't make our guest here very happy. He tried to come into the house, to look for me. Fortunately, Mackal is loyal as well as talented."

  "Someone from Court sent him?” Challen whispered.

  "Possibly."

  "Shall we leave, Father? I can be packed by midnight."

  "Yes, we shall leave.” His frown softened to a sad smile and he held out a hand, beckoning her to join him on the long bench. Challen gladly retreated into the comfort of his arm around her. “But don't hurry with your packing. I must first send for an escort."

  "Escort?” Her mind refused to follow down the path suggested by her father's words.

  "Yes. We can't travel all that way without someone to guard us. It's obvious my enemies have an idea where to find me now. And we have a certain prestige to hold up when we return home."

  "Return?” Challen closed her eyes and clutched the edge of the bench to preserve her outward calm.

  They were returning to Bainevah, the capital. They were returning to the king and the Court, to the place where her mother had been murdered and her baby brother kidnapped. Even after all these years, Challen couldn't understand how a priestess could be slaughtered in front of the very altar as she served Mother Matrika, yet no one had been caught or even identified. Yet it had happened, and Shazzur had snatched his young daughter up and fled the city that very night, positive that they were the next targets.

  Challen had vague memories of bright colors and wide, sparkling rivers, crowded markets and the quiet, cool beauty of the temples. Part of her thrilled at the thought of living again in a place where water was there for the wasting and merely breathing didn't drench her in sweat. A place where she could read hundreds of scrolls she had never read a dozen times already. Where she could hear birds sing and not worry that every stranger who looked at her too long was a slave trader looking for innocent flesh to kidnap.

  Part of her wanted her sweet, dim memories of Bainevah to forever stay memories, and for her simple, dry, quiet life to go on unchanged. She was the daughter of the King's Seer, daughter of a fire priestess, with power in her noble blood. By birth alone, she had the right to move among the elite of the Court, to drip jewels and expensive clothes, to stand before the king without fear or shame. By birth, she carried powers that were gifts from the demi-gods, and she had a responsibility to use them wisely. Here at the oasis, she had been content to be merely a scholar and a healer. When she returned to Bainevah, what would Mother Matrika require of her, to be a good steward of the gifts given her?

  Challen was afraid, and not ashamed to admit it.

  She knew better than to argue with Shazzur when he spoke so calmly, quietly, as if the fact had already been accomplished.

  "Will Uncle Asqual come to escort us?” she asked, after many long moments of digesting this bit of news.

  "I doubt he will allow anyone else the honor,” Shazzur said with a smile.

  * * * *

  Mackal was not happy in the least, when Shazzur asked the garrison commander to send a message to Lord General Asqual, commander of Bainevah's armies. Challen could almost hear the roaring of his thoughts as his world turned upside down. When did a nobleman soldier with his neatly pleated linen tunic and pressed trousers, bronze fittings and crested helmet, eagerly play the part of errand boy for a graying old healer who preferred to go barefoot and wear threadbare robes? Why didn't the commander even ask what was in the parchment packet sealed with wax? Challen wondered what Mackal would think if he could see the crest pressed into the crimson wax. Very few men in the entire world had the right to use the ram's head crest. The king's former Seer was one.

  The commander's alacrity in obeying could partly be blamed on the prisoner. The man woke just moments after Mackal, the commander, and four soldiers came into the house. His eyes were gray, not black. He had a shadow, soft though it was, cast by the light coming through the partially shuttered windows. He told them he was a spice trader, and believed he was in the Oasis of Troanya—which was far to the northeast. The Oasis of Benetheer sat at the far-western edge of the desert in Bainevah's lands. Shazzur asked the commander to send the man to Bainevah, along with the message. Challen was glad to have him out of their house, even though it was just another step in the long process of changing their lives.

  "Are you leaving?” Mackal yelped, when Shazzur asked him to help Challen inventory and pack their belongings for departure. “Who will tend the wounded and sick? Where are you going?"

  "To the first question ... You will tend the people. Why do you think I took you as my student, if not to leave you here when I left? To the second, why ... I am returning to the capital."
<
br />   "Sir.” Mackal moved stiffly as he crossed the room to stand in front of Shazzur's worktable in the tower. “There is no time. I had hoped to be able to provide a better home for your daughter, but if you are leaving, I must respectfully ask now for the right to take her as my wife."

  "A better home?” Shazzur chuckled and gestured, to take in the tower, the courtyard, and the sheltered garden where Challen had grown her father's herbals. “This has been my daughter's home for most of her life and it has been more than suitable. It is now yours."

  "Then you will not be insulted, to leave her here as mistress of this house?” Mackal's face regained some color.

  "No. I will not leave her here."

  "But sir—I love her!"

  "Did you tell Challen this? Did you ever ask if she loved you?” Shazzur glanced at Challen, who kept busy inspecting her father's many scrolls as she put them one by one in the leather-wrapped baskets that kept them dry, whole, and safe from insects.

  "Tell her?” Mackal gaped. “Such a thing isn't proper."

  "Challen's mother came back from death to be with me, because she loved me. I risked death during the siege of Dreva, to find Naya, because I loved her. The day our daughter was born, she made me promise I would never give our daughter to anyone, unless I was sure he loved her as I loved my Naya, and that our daughter loved him with all her heart and soul.” Shazzur slowly shook his head, that crooked little smile of fond disappointment brightening his weary face. “I have taught you many things, and you have been a brilliant student, but this is something you have yet to learn."

  "But sir—Challen, please, tell your father you wish to stay here. You don't want to go to Bainevah. You would be lost there. You won't belong. You would be far happier here.” He swallowed audibly. “I adore you. I would take good care of you."

  "My place is with my father,” Challen said simply, not even glancing up from her work.

  "Her destiny is in Bainevah,” Shazzur said.

  Challen heard the faint hint of echo in his words, as if he had spoken from the depths of Mother Matrika's Temple. She shivered and fumbled the scroll she had picked up. That hint of power and wisdom hadn't touched her father's voice in years. Not since the night they fled Bainevah.