An azure sky rapidly clouded over with thunder-heads. A pole thrust against it like a pointing finger. At its base a fire burned, and the woman tied to the pole screamed in agony.
The vision was gone, and she could see her apprentice clearly once more. “Ishak! No!” Alanna yelled hoarsely. She reached out, but the bolt of power she threw at him was thin, and it vanished far short of the mark. She would never reach him in time. “Don’t! The sword—it’ll turn on you!”
“Why should you have it, Woman Who Rides Like a Man?” he yelled back, triumphant. “You won’t even use it! You don’t use your own Gift as much as you could. You don’t deserve to have more! I deserve the sword! I want the power!”
“Then why didn’t the sword come to you, instead of me?” Alanna cried, hoping to keep him talking. She was at the hill’s base now. “You can’t use this power, Ishak—the sword’s been warped! No!”
Ishak drew the sword, holding it aloft. Orange fire shimmered around the shining gray of the blade, pulsing fiercely. He laughed and pointed the sword at Alanna, speaking a word she couldn’t hear.
Instinctively she threw all the strength the Goddess had just given her into a shield. She had wanted only to defend herself, but the sword’s magic reflected back from her protection, enveloping Ishak in a ball of flame. He screamed, once. Then he was gone.
Tears streaming down her cheeks, Alanna trudged up the hill. There was nothing left of Ishak or of the scabbard he had carelessly thrown on the ground. Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, she wished he could have listened to her just one more time.
The tribespeople were waiting for her when she descended, with the crystal blade shimmering in her hand. “What will you do now?” Halef Seif inquired softly.
“I’m going to finish training your two shamans, that’s what I’m going to do,” she replied grimly. “What else is there?”
six
Ceremonies
The first of the Bazhir shamans arrived a week after Ishak’s fatal mistake with the crystal blade. They came sometime during the night; when Alanna arose in the morning, they were seated cross-legged before the altar. Faithful sat facing them, blinking solemnly as he returned their stares.
They told Alanna they had come to teach and to learn, that every wise shaman tried to study new things. They meant what they said, and they were not alone. Within days more arrived with their apprentices until—with Alanna, Kara, and Kourrem—fourteen shamans and six apprentices were trading spells in the tents of the Bloody Hawk.
“You should be pleased,” Ali Mukhtab remarked one night as he and Alanna sat up late. “You have done more than most Bazhir have accomplished in a lifetime. You have made girls shamans. You have begun a school for magic that will live and grow to become the greatest such school in existence. Even priests from the City of the Gods will come, even the warrior-sorcerers of Carthak.”
Alanna stared at the Voice of the Tribes. He had that misty, far-seeing look in his dark eyes that privately gave her the crawls. “You knew this school was going to happen?” she gasped. “And you never said anything?”
He smiled and puffed on his long-stemmed pipe. “I have learned—as all who would become the Voice must learn—to keep my silence about the future. It will happen without my help.”
Alanna snorted, and thought about it for long silent moments. At last she pointed out, “I still haven’t gotten Kara and Kourrem to leave off their face veils.” She didn’t discuss it with the girls any longer because it was a subject they could not agree on.
“They are right,” Mukhtab pointed out. “They have overcome too many old ideas, but this one they can never change. A woman without a veil is a woman of bad repute among the tribes. Good women may not speak to her, and good men may not know her.”
Alanna thought of the women of the Court of the Rogue and sighed. “That’s sad. Some of the most intelligent women I knew as I was growing up were prostitutes. I didn’t know many noble ladies well, you see.” Suddenly the ground beneath her trembled, and she looked up. “Visitors? At this hour?”
Grinning, Mukhtab knocked the ashes from his pipe into the fire. “I think you will like these visitors.”
They emerged from the tent to find the tribesmen gathered around the newcomers. These were five: two riders from the tribe, a man-at-arms in Barony Olau colors, and—to Alanna’s joy—Myles of Olau and Prince Jonathan.
Somehow she greeted the guests and introduced them to the headman, the Voice, the visiting shamans, and the apprentices. Jonathan captivated Kourrem, while Kara watched Myles with awewidened eyes. Once the knight smiled at her, saying, “There’s a dancing bear in Corus who’s almost as shaggy as I am.” Kara blushed beneath her veil and fled.
The noblemen greeted Alanna and Coram with warmth, reaching across carefully maintained distances to shake hands.