Daughter of the Flames (11 page)

“Have you no shame?” she cried, wiping tears from her face. “Get off!”

I felt a touch on my shoulder and looked round to find Mira and Deo standing behind me. It was Mira whose hand lay on my arm. Her other hand, visibly shaking, was pressed to the small bulge of her stomach.

“Zira,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I know you must be exhausted after … after everything. But if God spoke to you – please won’t you tell us what She said?” Her gaze left me to stare at the ruin of our home. “We need Her guidance now. We need … something.”

Talk to them? I nodded, feeling my shoulders bow under the weight of responsibility. How awful to be the only one who knew what had to be done. To be the one who had to do it.

I looked around and saw a heap of wall blocks lying near by; I stepped onto them and picked my way up to the top, so that I could be seen by everyone in the courtyard.

“Namoa!” I shouted. “Temple people! Hear me, please!”

The devastated people turned towards my voice and began to gather around the pile of rocks. Deo nodded encouragingly at me. I stood still, trying to remember what to do.

Is this right? I don’t know.

Is this what we do?

I don’t know!

My head swam dizzily as Zira and Zahira warped and twisted together. I couldn’t feel where one ended and the other began.

Does Zira end? Does Zahira begin? Are they even different? Who was asking?

Stop talking!

I closed my eyes briefly, then began. “Our Mother spoke to me in the sacred fire. Now I need to tell you what She said.” I paused for a moment, hanging, trying to decide. “God… God told me that when I left the flames I would have to decide what to do. When I opened my eyes in the shrine, I didn’t know. It was only when I came out here and saw this—” My voice broke. I swallowed. “Then I knew what She meant. We cannot stay here.”

I stopped, waiting until the murmuring and whispers died away. “You can all see it. Now that the walls are down, the Sedorne will never leave us alone. Our only hope is to leave, find somewhere safe to stay, until we can return and rebuild the House of God.”

“What?” It was Rashna, pushing her way to the front. Her voice shook with emotion as she stared up at me. “What are you talking about? That’s lunacy. We can’t abandon the temple. It’s our duty to protect the sacred fire. It’s the duty of all namoa.”

“The sacred fire doesn’t need our protection,” I said quietly. “It’s safe within the shrine. We aren’t. Surya believed the outlaws were sent by the Sedorne king. What do you think will happen when he realizes we’ve survived? He’ll never leave us alone, not while a single one of us defies him. He’ll send more men, and he’ll keep on until the Holy Order is completely destroyed. That’s why we can’t stay here.”

“Surya died to protect the House of God!” Rashna shouted roughly. “She would never have abandoned it. I don’t believe anything you say. I don’t believe God spoke to you at all. Why would She choose you, out of all of us? Why would She set you to lead us?”

I stared at her, and there must have been something in my face that warned her how close to the edge I was, because her mouth closed abruptly, and she stepped back.

“You all know me. My name is Zira. I am an orphan, and I was brought here after the Invasion Fire. You know me. But … but I am also someone else. Something else. My other – my real name is Zahira Elfenesh. I am the youngest daughter of Toril and Emelia Elfenesh. The last surviving heir to the Elfenesh line. God showed me who I was when I stepped into the flames. That’s why I will lead you.”

“The reia,” Mira whispered.

“The blue eyes.” Deo stared at me. “The voice…”

“You? You’re the reia?”

“She’s the one…”

Before my horrified eyes, Mira began to lower herself to her knees; others in the crowd swiftly followed suit.

“Stop that!” I cried, leaping down from the pile of stones. “For God’s sake, Mira, you’re pregnant.” I grabbed her before her knees could touch the ground, and pulled her back up. The sheer absurdity of the situation struck me and a bubble of hysterical laughter made my voice tremble as I nudged Deo, also halfway to the ground, with my foot. “Don’t you dare kneel before me, Deo! Get up, all of you! I’m still the person you knew.”

“But, Majesty—”

“And don’t call me that either. Just Zira, please.” My name is Zahira, whispered a voice in my head. I ignored it.

“But…” Mira clutched my arm. “What do you want us to do?”

“I only want you to trust me. That’s all. I think I know somewhere we can go to be safe, but you must trust me.”

“Where?”

Mira’s question was echoed by a dozen voices, and she released me to face the namoa and temple people again.

“I know someone. He owes me a debt. Owes me his life, he said. He swore an oath to me, that if ever I were in need, he would help me.”

“Who? Who is this person?” someone asked.

“His name is Sorin Mesgao.”

“Sorin? A Sedorne?” Rashna burst out.

“He is Sedorne, yes. But then, so am I. Half Sedorne, anyway.”

There was silence. I looked around at the shocked faces.

“He’s an honourable man. He has his own reasons to hate Abheron. He won’t betray me – or you. All we have to do is get ourselves to Fort Mesgao. Once we’re there, those of you with families will be able to go back to them, and the rest of us can try to contact the resistance. But first we have to get away from here, before word reaches King Abheron that his men found the temple empty. Once that happens, we’ll have very little time. Will you trust me?”

There was another moment of silence. Then Deo nodded decisively.

“Of course. We will go with you.”

There was a general murmur of agreement, and some nodding. A few people – including Rashna – stood back, unconvinced, but they did not voice their doubts. They were a minority. Looking around me at these people I knew so well, I saw a shining of terrible hope.

The temple people had lost their home and their leader, and now they had nothing left. These people – the ones who had started to kneel, the ones who looked at me with shining faces – would follow me as trustingly as sleepwalkers following a dream. I
was
a dream to them. A dream of the Chosen of God, the lost heir of the rei, who would deliver them from suffering. They were blind to all the flaws I had failed to mention. They would follow, and somehow I would have to lead.

Please, Mother, let me be right about Sorin, I prayed. Or they’ll be following me to their deaths.

The following week was the worst I had ever endured. Travelling to Mesgao in clear weather in a well-sprung trap with a pair of strong ponies was one thing. Making the same journey with one hundred and eighty-three men, women and children, using only the three ancient nags and one rickety cart that the Sedorne had not seen fit to steal … well, that was something else entirely.

To make our misery complete, the blossoming of spring we had just begun to enjoy played us false from the first day. We walked, stumbled and fell through a world of treacherous mud, damply slithering mist and clouds so low that the mountains behind us were completely shrouded. We had been forced to leave behind the namoa’s thick red robes with their wide hoods: they were too distinctive. Most of the namoa had very little else to wear, and the Sedorne had not spared anyone’s trunks or closets, so none of us had enough warm clothing.

There wasn’t much food – only the provisions which Mira and her helpers had hastily grabbed before the attack – so the parents stinted themselves in order to give their children enough to eat. I did the same, not out of any sense of nobility, but because children cry when they’re hungry, a kind of high, breathless sobbing that goes on and on. Adults at least suffer in silence.

During the day we split into several groups, so as to attract less attention. One group took the cart and travelled along the main road. The others made their way through the rocks and scrub above as quietly as they could, or split into even smaller groups and walked on the road some way behind. Here, at least, the weather was an aid to us. The mists and rain offered camouflage and reduced traffic along the mountain route. Still, whenever we passed other travellers, the namoa with face tattoos of stars, birds or flames would quietly disappear into the rocks.

Once, a small unit of gourdin surprised us on a sharp turn, and stopped the group of fifteen or so people travelling on the road. They inspected the grubby refugees and insisted on searching the cart, and they weren’t very polite about any of it.

Along with a fighting namoa named Kapila, I hid in the twisted bristlecone tree arching over the road. Rocks clenched in our hands, we waited to leap down onto the soldiers’ heads if they showed any sign of violence.

One of the gourdin pulled a toy – a rag doll – from the hands of a little girl and casually ripped it apart, flinging it down into the road when it proved to hold nothing more exciting than sawdust. When the child screamed, the gourdin slapped her hard enough to knock her to the ground.

I gasped, and beside me I felt Kapila brace to drop. But instead of giving the order to attack, I found myself reaching out and grabbing her arm, holding her still. Kapila stared at me in outrage as the gourdin ground the remains of the rag doll into the dirt and then swaggered away. I felt outrage myself – what am I doing? What needs to be done: quiet! – but I could not seem to move my arm. A few moments later, the soldiers finished their inspection and went on down the road.

As soon as they were out of sight, Kapila wrenched her arm away. “Why did you stop me?” she demanded, gesturing down at the still sobbing child, now being rocked in a namoa’s arms. “He might have killed her!”

A deep, cold voice that I barely recognized as my own answered, “She’s fine. Would you have risked all our lives over a rag doll and a few tears?”

Kapila stared at me in disbelief. “Just what are you?”

“One thing I’m not is a fool.”

She flung herself down out of the tree without even looking where she fell, landed badly, and limped away. I climbed down more slowly, my whole body shaking. I felt sick. Inside my head I heard Kapila’s question echoing in my own voice. But whose voice was it? Who had spoken? Who had held Kapila’s arm? Me? Was Zahira me, or Zira?

Who had made that choice?

Deo approached me a little while later, when we had moved on. “You did right,” he said quietly. “It was a hard decision, but a good one.”

“Thank you.” I touched his arm and turned away before he could see my expression. He didn’t understand. It wasn’t hard. For me – us – it wasn’t hard at all.

At night we gathered again, taking what comfort we could in one another’s company. There wasn’t much comfort to be had, especially as the days went on.

It was inevitable that the journey would take its toll on our most vulnerable. The first to be lost was old Theri. He was seventy years old and had been confined to the infirmary for weeks before the attack with a weak heart. As dawn broke on our second day of travel, his daughter – brave, reckless Kapila – went to wake him and found that he had slipped away in the night. We buried him by the roadside. Kapila, weeping bitterly, vowed to return and place a marker there before the year was out. Afterwards she stared at me as if I were a murderer. I felt like one.

Esha, a young temple woman, was heavily pregnant when we began our trek. Her birthing pangs started on the third day of the journey, a month early. When the dreadful thing was over, we buried her tiny stillborn son under a mountain vetch that was alight with yellow flowers, and then tucked the devastated woman, still weak with loss of blood, into the cart and carried on.

On the fifth day, the worst came. Padma, a four-year-old refugee girl, had been receiving treatment for her weak chest from the first day she arrived at the temple; deprived of that, and in the cold and the wet, she sickened rapidly. The herb namoa told me it was an infection in her lungs, and there was nothing to be done.

Padma had come to the temple as an orphan. She had no family to offer comfort in those final moments. It was me who held her, stroking her shuddering back, rocking her, until her painful, rattling breaths finally stopped. I dug her grave, and built a cairn of pale stones to mark the resting place, praying that the Holy Mother would warm the little girl’s cold face and hands in the world beyond. Rashna came to help me, and though I caught her hard, doubting look, I still valued her silent company. There were too many voices in my own head now for me to enjoy conversation with anyone else.

I waited, almost hopefully, for someone to point a finger. For the moment when someone would cry, “She did this! She’s responsible! She’s not fit to be our leader!” Each day I saw faces that were angry, tired, accusing. I saw people turn from me in bitterness or despair. I knew the first night that someone slipped away under cover of darkness into the mountains, leaving their friends behind because they could not or would not endure our trek; and I knew that it continued to happen every night afterwards. I waited – but the moment did not come. They might weep and rage and doubt, but still … still they followed me.

They looked to me for everything. Comfort, guidance, a sense of hope, a promise that everything would be all right again. Even Mira and Deo treated me differently. It was as if their friend Zira had died – or, worse, as if she had never existed at all. When they looked at me, they saw someone else. I began to realize, with a creeping sense of fear, that I no longer had a single friend. Only followers.

It was at those times, more than any other, that I missed Surya. I missed her wry smile and her teasing. The way that she had read from the Book of the Holy Mother, and made me believe in the words. I had lost her so quickly, so unexpectedly, that I could hardly believe she was really gone, even though I had been the one to wash her body and prepare it for death, and lay her in the ground of the flower garden, under her favourite blue starflower. Grief ached like a rock lodged in my chest.

I missed my family too, almost too much to bear. Anything might stir memories of them. The smile on a woman’s face that reminded me of my mother. A stumble in the dirt that recalled my brother’s clumsiness. A certain tone in a man’s voice as he spoke to his child that sounded for a moment like my father. The young girl playing with her hair, just as Indira had once done. The images were so sharp, and so very painful. Zahira longed for her family, wanted them,
needed
them in a way that Zira had never needed anyone, not even Surya.