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“Stop it!” she yelled, trying to make herself heard. With a corner of her mind she gripped the magical fingers, holding them away from her. “You don’t have the strength; you’re using your own life-force!”
He knocked her onto her back. Alanna clung to the sword’s hilt; at this range he couldn’t miss once he got the blade free. They struggled, drops of sweat falling onto her face from him. He was turning grayer, and there were blue lines around his mouth and nostrils.
Everything went black. The cloud that suddenly enfolded Alanna cut off all air and feeling. She fought, drawing on reserves of strength that had been built up over years of work and subterfuge. Slowly her own violet fire shoved the blackness away, sparking and flaring where it touched the crystal blade. In the distance she heard a cry.
The blackness was gone. Akhnan Ibn Nazzir collapsed against her, his eyes wide and staring in death.
Gammal and Halef pulled the old man off her, and Ishak helped her to her feet. Alanna swayed with exhaustion; Kara and Kourrem hurried forward to support her on either side. Ali Mukhtab looked up from his examination of Ibn Nazzir’s body, his dark eyes puzzled. “There is no mark on him, yet he is dead. What caused it?”
Alanna rubbed her eyes. She had expended much of her strength, physical and magical. Just now she only wanted to go to her tent and lie down. “He was using power he didn’t have,” she rasped finally. “He wasn’t that good a sorcerer. He tapped his own life-force because he wanted me dead.” Looking at her right hand, she was stunned to realize she held the crystal sword. “If he could’ve lasted, maybe he would’ve won. But I lasted. I usually do,” she added bitterly. “I’m sorry I brought trouble to you.” She started to turn away.
“One moment.” Halef’s voice was kind but firm. She looked back to see him pointing at the shaman’s tent. “This is your home now.”
Alanna braced her free hand on Kourrem’s shoulder. “I don’t understand.”
Ali Mukhtab rose to stand beside the headman. “Halef Seif is right. You have slain the old shaman. You must now take his place until you teach a new shaman, or until one slays you.”
It was too much. “That’s crazy!” Alanna shouted, her voice cracking with weariness. “I’m not—I’m a knight! I’ve never taught sorcery—”
“Would you leave us defenseless against the shamans of the hillmen?” Halef asked quietly. Alanna closed her mouth, remembering the Bazhir tales of the hill-sorcerers. “That is the law. That is our custom.” He opened the door flap of the shaman’s tent. “This is your home now, Woman Who Rides Like a Man.”
For a moment Alanna’s violet eyes met those of the Voice and of the headman fiercely. She did not want to spend time bound to one place; she was searching for adventure! Another wave of exhaustion swept her, and she looked away. Faithful sat expectantly before the open door, waiting.
“I don’t care if it’s home or a grave-digger’s hut,” she sighed. “I just want a place to lie down.” With Kara and Kourrem supporting her, still clutching the crystal sword, she entered the shaman’s tent.
4
STUDIES IN SORCERY
ONE OF ALANNA’S FIRST ACTS AS SHAMAN OF THE Bloody Hawk was to approach Ali Mukhtab and Halef Seif about training replacements: Kara, Kourrem, and Ishak. “Ishak knows some magic,” she told them. “And all three must’ve developed some control, or this village wouldn’t be here still. It doesn’t take much learning to be a shaman, and they would be better than Ibn Nazzir ever was.”
The men thought her proposal over for long moments, their faces unreadable. Alanna tried to keep from fidgeting. Where would she find other likely candidates, if she couldn’t train these three? Also, giving the outcasts shaman status would go a long way toward redressing the wrong Ibn Nazzir had done them, to her way of thinking.
“To make girls shamans is a new thing,” Ali Mukhtab said at last. “But this tribe has done many things that are new since the coming of the Woman Who Rides Like a Man.”
“Our shaman now is also a woman,” Halef added, smiling just a little.
“You like this, then?” Mukhtab asked. The headman’s smile broadened. “I think it will be very interesting to watch. Certainly the young ones will obey this shaman.”
Mukhtab nodded. “It will be done,” he told Alanna. “May the gods smile on you.”
Alanna levered herself to her feet. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m probably going to need the gods smiling on me.”
The three were waiting for her when she returned to the tent. Alanna looked around, satisfied. The place looked very different from the way it had the afternoon she had first lurched inside. Brass and silver shone softly in the lamplight. The carpets glowed in their original deep colors. The hangings that separated the temple from the living area were spotless. It’s actually pleasant to come home to, she thought.
“You asked us to wait for you here,” Kourrem, ever forthright, told her. “You talked with the headman and the Voice. Are we in trouble?”
Alanna shook her head, accepting the date wine Ishak poured for her. “We were talking about you, yes,” she replied. “But you aren’t in trouble. I wanted their permission to train you as shamans. They said I could.”
For a moment three pairs of eyes—the girls’ dark brown, the boy’s brownish gray—stared at her. Kourrem started to cry.
“I thought you didn’t wish to talk about magic, ever,” Ishak reminded her, puzzled.
Kara had joined Kourrem, upsetting Alanna. “Girls, stop that. I didn’t mean to make you cry; drink some of this wine.” She told Ishak, “I said that without knowing the girls hadn’t been trained at all, and you only a little. Kourrem, Kara, please don’t cry. Yes, I’m sick of magic; but someone has to teach you three, and I’m her. Listen to me.” She sat down on a pillow with a sigh. The girls were reduced to sniffles; she had everyone’s attention. “While I was a page, then a squire, in the palace, there was a man—the king’s nephew, my prince’s cousin. Duke Roger was the greatest sorcerer in the Eastern Lands. He was handsome, well-liked, charming. I felt I was the only person in the world who knew he meant my prince no good, that he caused accidents that nearly killed Jonathan. I think he had me kidnapped by the enemy when we fought Tusaine. Then, when I took the Ordeal of Knighthood two moons ago, I learned he had used his sorcery to blind everyone—including me, in a way—to his plans. He wanted to kill the queen. I accused him before the king and the entire Court. Roger demanded a trial by combat.”
She drew a deep breath. This was p
ainful. “We fought. He—cut through—” She blushed, unsure of what to say. “I had disguised myself as a boy—” She waved her hands around her chest area, turning redder than before.
Quick-witted Kourrem saved her. “You mean you bound your chest so it was flat, and he cut through the binding.”
Alanna nodded. “When he found out—when everyone found out—that I was a girl, he went crazy. He attacked with a sword and with magic, but he didn’t attack just me. His sorcery would’ve killed the king, or Jonathan. I had to stop him, so I killed him. Ever since then, I’ve felt magic—any kind of magic—is too easily used for evil.” She drew a deep breath. “But ignoring magic is worse. It’s like this crystal sword.” She touched the blade she now wore at her waist. “I ignored it, and Ibn Nazzir was able to turn it against me. I have to keep it for myself, and master it, so it can never be used against me again. That’s what you three must learn to do with your magic, or it will turn on you.” She rubbed her nose, embarrassed. She was not one for speeches. She was just realizing that she had let herself in for a large number of them. “We start in the morning. You’d best get your sleep.”
The next minute she was drowning in gleeful teenagers who insisted on hugging and kissing her. She shooed them out and closed the tent flap for the night, shaking her head. “This training will be good for them,” she told Faithful as she prepared to go to bed.
The cat watched her, his tail twitching lazily. It will be good for you, too, he commented. It might even make an adult of you, but I doubt that.
Alanna glared at him as she wound herself into her blankets. “I’m glad I have you to keep me humble,” she muttered as she readied herself for sleep.
I’m glad you do, too, Faithful replied, settling himself by her nose.
The tomb was dark and still. Behind her the door was sealed shut by a slab of rock the palace servants had placed there. Before her, on a granite block, lay the body of Duke Roger of Conté. He looked as if he slept, well preserved by the arts of the Black God’s priests. His black velvet tunic hid the shoulder wound and the thrust through his chest that had ended her duel with him. There was no sound in the tomb. He was dead.
