Kitara: A Tale of Leinyere

While no more was said of the incident, he spent the whole day pointing out the various landmarks of the desert journey, and some of the wildlife of the desert, hares and snakes, hawks and the like that eked out a rough existence in the sands of the scoured lands. They settled into an easy rhythm, and the days of the journey passed faster as he taught her to ride desert fashion, or answered her questions, or even recited poems.

The nights without Noreah were cold as the autumn wore on, but even there, after a few days the older woman slipped into her tent after spending the evening with Mahmoud, and offered her some comfort, whether just holding her or making love quietly to not disturb the camp or carry the sound of it to the tent of their mutual husband. Finally, Jahane gathered the courage one night to slip to the tent of her husband as he lay with Noreah. "May I come in?"

There was a stunned silence on the other side, then some hushed talking. While a man might have two wives it was considered a soft city perversion to lay with both of them at once. Largely it was considered an indignity that wives did not have to endure. It was somewhat scandalous. "We're not decent" came the reply.

"I did not expect you were, now can I come in or not?" the girl asked, quietly though so as not to alert the whole camp. A moment later, the pins fastening the flap shut were moved and the girl slipped into the dark tent. "Don't dress on my account" she trembled a moment, then let her own garments slip to the ground.

Mahmoud looked between her and Noreah who shrugged and patted the cushions in front of her. "Come sit and tell us what's on your mind"

Jahane knelt "well. It's been on my mind that I'd like to spend time with my husband, but... I want you to stay here." She reaches for Noreah's hand "I want... for us all to get along" she worried her lip and Mahmoud looked her over.

"Well... I mean we did go to all this trouble..." his eyes drank in her curves, lush for a woman of the desert. She felt the callouses on his hands as he ran them over her body, and she leaned into his touch. Noreah slid her hands along the girl's back "do you want me to tell you what to do?"

"yes" she heard, falling from her own lips, "tell me what to do"

Then it was a chorus of hands on her, sliding along her body, exploring every bit of her. Two mouths joined in, adding to the pleasure of their touch. Noreah pulled away then, sitting back and giving advice as Jahane gave in to Mahmoud's hunger. She thrilled at the feel of him, so solid, his hands so strong. His skin tasted right against her tongue; his body smelled right. It was strange, to have her flesh crave him in a way it didn't crave Noreah, while her mind still needed the comfort of the other woman's presence. After brief foreplay he flipped her, entering her from behind and she eagerly thrust back against him. This felt right in a way she knew she had been missing, pinned beneath him as he took her, slaking his lust on her body till they were both spent.

***

Months of talking, wheedling, making their way through the various sycophants and functionaries of the court of Darius had finally paid off. Faisal sat with Chosen in a small garden, enjoying the lush greenery of the northern winter. The garden was bedecked with roses, olive trees and orange trees in pots, and tulips bursting with a cacophony of color. She still complained of the heat, but to him, it was a cool refreshing day. They sipped tea and waited on others to arrive.

The first was a woman in the rich blue garb of a priestess. Leila. She was part of the crowd that believed Zahara had offended the gods in joining with Halldor. Her contacts among the priests in the capital were invaluable to their enterprise. He bowed low "Greetings, your Grace" then straightened "Please, won't you sit and take some refreshment with us." She sat at a nearby table, with her retinue of hangers-on and guards. To her right sat a mountain of a man, a slab of muscle and mail who said nothing, and whose giant fists fumbled with the dainty cups of tea.

After came Darius' brother and fellow sorcerer Rahm. As he was a bastard, he was out of the line of succession. His white robes bore a purple sash, a daring claim to association with the throne. It spoke of the boldness of his character. Bastards also had great leeway in their activities so his actions might not be ascribed to Darius himself if things went poorly. He too was accompanied by bodyguards. Unlike the priestess, however, he sat at the table with Faisal and the Chosen, leaving the guards to stand "So you are the Chosen of Kitara" he addressed Chosen directly, and Faisal caught her momentary look of surprise. "I am well informed. The blade you bear... it is not a boon. Not a curse but not a boon." He looked at it "I'd ask to see it, but to be honest I'm terrified of it."

Faisal saw the man edge away as if confronted by a viper. Having seen it in action, he was unsurprised. Chosen responded "Peace upon you, noble lord. The blade is sheathed. I shall not unsheathe it here as I am among friends." She patted the blade "And you do not stand between me and my target."

At that, the priestess leaned in "if that is a holy relic, then it should be in the hands of the temple. It should not be entrusted to some foreign.... Elf." The sneer in her voice was audible. Palpable really. Chosen merely offered a shrug "if the goddess meant you to have it, she'd have delivered it to you instead of me."

The bodyguard stood "Perhaps she has delivered it to us" and drew his Kopesh with a smooth motion. Rahm scrambled to get away from the table and motioned for his bodyguards to dive. In an instant Chosen was on her feet, the blade singing as it sprang free of its scabbard. A moment later the air was filled with the keening of the blade. A slash and the arm holding the Kopesh fell to the ground before its owner knew he was cut. Another and his shield and shield-arm lay on the tiles. His bellow was not enough to drown out the joyous howl of the blade as it sliced off his legs and his arteries sprayed the garden with his blood.

Chosen snapped her wrist, flicking blood from the blade into the face of the priestess who had accompanied him. "I hope we can dispense with the notion that the blade will be separated from me."

The woman looked at her, white as a sheet. Her trembling hand brought a glass to her lips and she sipped at the cool drink within, then set it down, still gripping it to hide her tremor of fear "Of course, Chosen" she finally mumbled.

The Elf turned "Faisal and I will lead you and Rahm into the palace. I will deal with the guards; Faisal will watch my back. The two of you will counter Zahalldor's magics. Between the two of you, every threat should be countered. Once I get close enough, Zahalldor will die and leave only Darius to sit on the Peacock Throne." Chosen's voice was tired, and Faisal could hear the weariness in every syllable. For a moment she looked every day of her hundreds of years. The moment passed though, and she straightened "We've lost an ally in the man you threw at me. Let us be about this before you are tempted to lose more good men."

***

Jahane looked down over the City of Qasin from her horse. She rested her hand on her belly, imagining she could feel the life stirring in it. The wise women had confirmed she was with child but pressed on her it was too early for her to tell Mahmoud. Noreah had guessed at it though and had shared in her joy quietly as they could.

Mahmoud was in the market, selling Elven trinkets to the merchants of Qasin, buying presents for the tribesmen, deeply discounted as the festival of the New Year was some weeks past, and the lavish gifts left unbought sat in stalls or on shelves, unwanted. She could see them already, returning her next year with the baby, wandering the market, buying clothes that would be outgrown in a month's time. Still, it made her smile.

"What are you thinking about, beautiful girl?"

"I only ever think of you, Noreah"

"Lying brat, if you weren't pregnant..."

"I know, you'd redden my round ass. There's always some reason you aren't ready to. I'm starting to think you're all talk."

"I mean I am a Masalim we're nonviolent."

Jahane laughed at that, as Noreah was fairly serious when it came to matters of her faith. It was rare for her to joke "have you been to the temple of your people in Qasin?"

"Many times. I have an ill feeling about the city this year though. Mahmoud agrees. We are not staying the night but will camp on the river. We leave tomorrow and we will winter some at the oasis of your parents. By then you should be showing and I'm sure they will want what time with you they can."

Jahane nodded. Noreah had told Mahmoud the night before about a tension among the spirits of the desert. They felt something was coming, something terrible. It was best they be on their way.

***

The tittering eunuch had done his work, and a small party slipped unseen into the palace in the dead of night. Bribed guards let the quartet through various hallways, through jasmine scented gardens, and the maze of the palace proper. The cool night air of the northern desert blew a soft breeze through diaphanous curtains, billowing and glowing in the moonlight.

Finally, they came to the princess' wing. There the guards were not bribed. There they were stalwart men who remembered the blood of the desert. It availed them not, for in a moment the terrible shriek of the Bitter Blade pierced the night as surely as the blade itself hewed through flesh and mail and bone. Scimitars dropped from severed hands. Heads rolled away from torsos, themselves separated from legs to topple in a pile.

The door they stood before resisted blows, and so Faisal took forth his agate, summoning the Dao. It formed from the tile of the floor and the earth below it, rock and clay becoming a man-shaped figure. Faisal spoke a word and its mighty fists smashed down the doors. In the chamber beyond were statues of men, with razor-sharp steel blades in their hands.

Suddenly, the statutes moved and were upon the four, walking with a grace unknown to any golem. Chosen slashed with her blade and it smashed the leg of one, who continued to fight. It battered her, slamming her against a nearby wall with the force of its blow.

Rahm spoke a word, and lightning danced from his fingers ineffectively across the statues. Leila muttered a word "they have minds! There are souls in there!" The priestess mumbled another spell and one of the golems turned to smash itself into its neighbor., a fracas ensued, with several of the golems starting to pound the traitorous one into dust.

Faisal took advantage of the moment to throw a cloudy quartz into the air, summoning a Genie to join his Dao. A whirlwind below the waist, a man above. The spirit of the air towered over the golems, and its mighty fists laid about, smashing granite into rubble. The Dao moved among them as well. Weaker than the Genie, the Dao was a still a creature of the earth and where it touched, stone turned to clay and flaked away.

The quartet of mere mortals cowered behind a marble pillar, watching the spirits lay the golems low. Still, as the battle raged on the two slowed and their spirits dimmed. Faisal knew that they would not last long. He held off, needing them to thin the numbers so Chosen could finish the rest. Still, he had no desire for these spirits' immortality to be only in his recounting of the tale. As the Dao was knocked to the earth by one of the last, he cried a word, releasing the earth spirit from its pledge. It fled, back to wherever its kind were from, and the remaining golems turned on the air spirit.

They would have no chance, however. Chosen sprang forward as they turned away, the keening blade humming with bloodlust. She swung Bitterness, slicing through golems and unleashing the trapped spirits of guards used in their making.

Suddenly, the only sound was the soft hum of her blade, which she sheathed. The four surveyed the carnage and moved into the next hall.

***

Zahalldor woke, throwing on a robe as she heard the crashing in the hallway. The captain of her guard roused himself from her bed, grabbing his kopesh and striding out, fully naked into the hall beside her. Before them were a quartet. Two she knew... no. three. Part of her recoiled in terror and screamed at her to flee, the part of her that remained of Halldor. Tall and lean, clad in silvery mithril, and bearing a blade. She knew something terrible was there, but she had cut enough of Halldor away that she had no notion of what it was. Still, all problems could be solved with enough violence.

She spoke a word, sending a bolt of fire towards the group. It splashed against a shield of ice, summoned by Rahm, her cousin of sorts. Bastard in both parentage and personality, Rahm was not her equal in sorcery. She purchased a moment, tossing a ruby on the ground and summoning an Ifrit.

At the same time, some ragged son of the desert threw his own gem forward, and his own Ifrit emerged. The fire spirits raged and launched at each other. The princes of the City of Fire notoriously hated each other as much as they hated the other Djinn.

Zahalldor muttered a spell, looking to fog the minds of the soldiers against her, the desert man and the hated Elf. Leila emerged from behind Rahm, abating the spell with one of her own. Zahalldor snarled, she was enough for either Leila or Rahm, but only a match for the two of them. Still, her champion and lover was enough to take some barbarian swordsman and some fey Elf.

He launched himself forward. The enchantments on his blade were strong. They gave him the strength of an ogre and the swiftness of the wind. He caught the Elf by surprise, smashing her in the side of the head with his hilt and dazing her. He turned on the desert swordsman, who met him blade to blade. The boy was good, but he was no match for a magically enhanced killer with an enchanted blade.

Unfortunately, she saw that all the boy had to do was stay alive. As she rained fire down on Rahm and deflected a thrust from Leila's mind, she heard a terrible song emanate from the ground at her lover's feet. The elf slid her longsword free, and sliced through him, from his groin to his head, cutting him in twain.

A sense of horror slid over her, time seemed to nearly still, and through the dreadful calm stalked death in the form of an Elf. She knew that she had... Halldor had... somehow wronged this woman and all her careful plans were now for naught. The sins of another's past were to be visited upon her. She called down lightning, only for Rahm to shield the woman long enough that the terrible sword slid through her breast to stop in her heart.

She muttered a spell... or tried, then choked on her own blood and fell.

***

Faisal ran for the blade but the elf tugged it free and slid it into her scabbard. "Get us out of here." Faisal blinked, then looked back at the pair of sorcerers eyeing the blade. He summoned the Genie, purposefully held back in the conflict, and it swept them up in a great swirl of air. They were out through the garden and into the night air, flying over the city and away from the spells of the pair below.

Already they could see the columns of Darius's men coming to "liberate" the city from the Sultan and his "wayward" daughter. Not any of their problem. They'd made arrangements to have their horses and a few of Faisal's cousins outside the city so they could make their way away. After landing, they rode for an hour, clearing the environs of the city and trying to keep clear of the civil war.

Faisal and Chosen sat across the fire from one another, her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the blade. She looked, deflated. Hollow. He knew he could take it off her, but in knowing that he felt no real urge. He stared at her, and she looked up with haunted eyes. "Put this blade aside. Leave it here Faisal for some other idiot." She swallowed "I know... I know you've wanted me. You can have me. Just... just set it aside."

It was true. He had wanted her. When she was the Chosen. When she was powerful. She was still comely, in that... waifish way of the Elves. "what's your name?"

"Eevi"

He nodded, then stood "well, Eevi. If you're concerned about me..." he stood and strode around the fire "come with me." He gripped the sword and ripped it free, feeling it pull him west even as the blade curved and the hilt shifted to better fit his hand.

She looked up, forlorn "I'll come with you Faisal. I'll see this through to the end but tell me, can you even remember what she looks like?"

He sneered "of course" but all he could remember was what he wrote about her, his words not her face. The face he saw was only bearded. Older. The face was Mahmoud.

***

Jahane's father had welcomed the new couple with open arms. Mahmoud was a better match even than Selim. Rich, connected to the politically important Nahasz, and a renowned Sha'ir. "I sent the boy Faisal on a wild chase" he confided, sipping his coffee as the two men talked in the garden. "When I heard it was you who took her, I was overjoyed. And to hear that she will bear you another fine son... well I could not be prouder."

Mahmoud sipped his own coffee. Now that he was married to the girl, he was embarrassed at how he'd come by her, and the effusive praise of her father who seemed so overjoyed at her situation. "Yes well. She might not have been happy. I've done you a great wrong."

"Nonsense. Anyway, if you feel you've done me a great wrong you can compensate me"

Mahmoud rolled his eyes and looked over at his father-in-law. It always came down to money, in the end "I promise you we will prosper together, father" the tone calculated and neutral. He wanted to be away from this place, but Jahane was so pleased to be back with her mother and sisters, and Noreah thought it would be good for her.

Still, the visit stretched on, from a week to a month, and finally, as word of the war in the East came in on the hooves of swift messengers, Mahmoud made ready to go.

The caravan was about to depart when he spotted Faisal and an ethereal blond woman. He slid off his horse and drew his blade, and two of his men joined him. The Elf circled around, but he could see she was unarmed and he let her go.

"What do you want pup? I won. The girl is my wife." He rested his hand on the hilt of his blade, looking over at the lean young Sha'ir, who grinned with more confidence than he should, given their last encounter.

"My sword arm no longer hangs so limp, dog." The boy whipped a blade from its scabbard, and it gave a low and hungry moan. Mahmoud knew the blade. Kitara's blade. He blanched "All of you scatter" he drew his own sword, launching himself forth. If he was swift enough to kill the boy so much the better, and if he died instantly, then none else would have to "Run you Nahasz, leave the boy to me"

Unfortunately, his men were more loyal to the spirit of his leadership than the letter. They too sprang forward, only to die, cut in half by the terrible blade. Mahmoud sliced the boy's cheek open, then danced back. Faisal advanced, shearing through Mahmoud's blade and his bicep, nearly severing the arm. He kicked Mahmoud to the ground.

"You will take hours to die, old man. I am Faisal. I am the future. You are the past. Pathetic. Soft."

Mahmoud could not resist a quip "not as soft as the cunt of your love, boy" though he hoped his voice didn't carry too far, as his wives would have shunned him a few nights for that.

His quip bought him a moment; the boy was struck from behind. A scimitar skittered across hidden mail, and the boy turned, slicing Mahmoud's man in half, leaving him in the dust with the others. Mahmoud moved to get away, but a boot to the head laid him low.