C
hapter One
Song ltered through the air of Scratha Fortress. Deiq lay on his back,watching dust particles dri through the air, and focused his aention on thechant. It came from the other end of the Fortress: Alyea’s hearing would prob
-
ably never get sharp enough to hear that far, but for Deiq it was a simple mat
-
ter of screening out all other noises along the way,The song claried: tenor and soprano voices, male and female, wove acrossa raling beat from at least three dierent
shabacas
, and a piping cactus-utewarbled the main theme:
Iii-naa tarren . . . iii-nas lalien . . . iii-be salalae . . . .
The accents and inections marked the singers as servants rather thannobles. Deiq smiled at the ceiling, reecting that a thousand years ago therewould have been only a jacau-drum beat behind the song, and the singerswould have been the leading men of the tribe.The chant had run very dierently back then:
Itna tarnen, itnas talien, itnabeshalla: We empty ourselves into the gods, the gods pour themselves into us, glory beto the gods.
Time had changed both pronunciation and meaning; the modernunderstanding of the old paean was closer to
We serve the gods, the gods smileon us, we survive under the glory of the gods
.Which said a lot about how much humanity had changed since the ha’reyerst emerged from their seclusion . . . and how lile humans still understoodof what they had agreed to.These were dangerous thoughts with a full ha’reye beneath the Fortressand a restless, newly bound desert lord pacing around. Deiq distracted him
-
20
Leona Wisoker
self for a few moments by focusing his vision narrowly enough to track a sin
-
gle dust mote dancing along its erratic path, then widened his vision to take inthe entire room without moving his eyes.Beside him, Alyea sighed deeply: he blinked back to human-normal vi
-
sion in case she woke. She rolled closer; he moved an arm and let her tuck inagainst his side, his mouth quirking in a tired smile. Humans were so damn
vulnerable
. . . and so
stupid
at times. Even though he’d promised to protect andguide her, that le a lot of room for interpretation.He wouldn’t take that leeway, of course; but Alyea didn’t even understandthat it existed.Not that she’d had much choice about his presence while she slept. Sheneeded rest before the Conclave, and he wasn’t about to leave her alone again.Besides, the other options for companionship were as welcome as leing anasp-jacau chew his arm o.He watched her sleep, reecting how much more pleasant she was to lookat than the grimly suspicious stares of the other desert lords. Her dark hairwas half undone from the sensible top-knot that kept desert heat from soakingthe back of one’s neck with a continual layer of sweat. Deiq had bound his ownhair in a simple tail; perspiring rarely became an issue for him. Alyea’s lightclothing, however, already sported several tell-tale dark patches. In true sum
-
mer it wouldn’t have been so bad, but the weather had begun edging towardsthe rainy season, and the ambient humidity was climbing rapidly.Deiq set his ngertips against Alyea’s temple and gently soothed her bodytemperature down until the rank sweat-smell faded. She sighed and rolledaway again, one arm stretching up over her head and her lithe body twistinglike a cat’s; his hands itched to touch her again, with much more than ngertippressure this time.
How many times before this have you fallen in love?
she’d asked earlier, notunderstanding at all; and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to explain. She’dlooked so
hopeful
, her dark eyes lit with an intensity he’d seen before; she wasstill young enough to be romantic, in spite of her insistence that roses wouldn’tmean anything to her.He sighed and kept his hands to himself. That would just complicate mat
-
ters, at the moment. Aer the disaster her second blood trial had become, sheneeded extra time to heal–and not just physically.So let Alyea think he was in love with her for now. Humans needed thatkind of security, and it didn’t really maer. She’d gure it out eventually. Untilthen, it was pleasant to have her quiet, innocent trust resting against the edgesof his mind.He knew it wouldn’t last. It never did.Eyes half-shut, he watched the dust of decades swirl through shas of re
-
ected sunlight and listened to the song being sung at the other end of theFortress. Joyfully accepting servitude to invisible forces: how could humans thinkthat way? How could they not
understand
?A sucking weariness passed through Deiq’s entire body for a moment, haz
-
ing his vision around the edges; then the haze turned golden, and he felt animmense
presence
thrust into his mind.
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