Demon's Arrow

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

There were knots in Isika’s embroidery. She hissed at them, trying to pick the tiny threads apart, her tongue between her teeth. Success. She laid the work in her lap and stretched, sighing, moving her head back and forth to try to relieve the soreness in her neck. She was always sore these days.

The columns in the petitions room stretched up to the ceiling far above her head. She let her eyes travel across the paintings that depicted scenes from Maween’s history, all while listening to the person standing in court asking for help with straying cattle.

“They run every day. It must be poison. They always stayed home before.”

Isika let her eyes drift to the old cattle herder and smiled at him when his eyes met hers. He nodded slightly.

She knew the elders thought that doing handwork during Petitions was strange. But Isika’s foster mother, Auntie Teru, had suggested the work, knowing just how bad Isika’s nights had been lately.

“Keeping your hands busy keeps your heart still,” she told Isika.

Half a year ago, the Desert King had attacked the sacred city of Azariyah with fire, revealing that Isika was his daughter. She had been bred with warrior and whisperer blood to be some kind of magical weapon for him, Maween’s greatest enemy.

It was a bit much. They had defeated him and he went back to whatever hole he had crawled out of. But Isika was still World Whisperer. She still needed to train for her queenship. And the elders had not cast her out. Yet. So she was required to be at Petitions every day, to sit and listen to people who Isika feared thought she was a usurper. Her heart had begun to race during Petitions. She could barely calm herself sometimes. So Auntie taught her to embroider and as she used her hands she found that her heart was more still. She could listen. She could glance up and see that someone was lying by the look on his or her face, and tell Karah, fourth elder, by leaning forward and whispering to her. The handwork had helped her to remain.

These days her time was mostly split between pottery and Petitions, as well as some physical training so she would have the same skills as the seekers. She ran back and forth between the workshop and the palace. She ran up mountain trails with Jabari. He was still faster than her. She sat in Auntie’s garden and waited for the sun to go down so she could watch the lights of the insects in the grasses, lie down so the plants reached over her head, smell the night flowers as they released their scent.

Andar had asked her to cease her apprenticeship with the master potter, but Isika had refused. She knew she wouldn’t be a good World Whisperer or queen if she dwelled in the realm of the mind. Working with clay kept her aware of order and beauty, which fed her ability to untangle policy and questions. So she kept working at the workshop and ran back and forth all day long.

She looked at the long line of people in front of her and the elders. The day before had been a feast day, and they had not held Petitions, so questions had built up.

The next woman who came forward was a tiny, wizened old woman. She raised gnarled hands in supplication to the elders and began to bow, but Andar spoke gently to her.

“No need for that, Auntie. Don’t bow to us. You are here as a child of Nenyi, our equal. What is the matter?”

“They have taken all the fish from my pond,” the woman said. “It’s my pond and I told a group of men they could have half the fish. I’ve counted the fish. I can feel them in the water because I have gathering magic.” A frown crossed her face. “I could tell that there were twenty, and now there is only one fish left. They say they took only half, but I know they took all of them.”

Isika let her mind drift, knowing she wasn’t needed in this simple interaction. She smoothed her hand over the story she was stitching with her embroidery. There were purple Keerza, the ancient creatures like gazelle, and a large black bird with red glints in his wings. He was Keethior, another ancient creature called an Othra. He was Isika’s own protector, sworn to guard the World Whisperer since the first whisperer had come from Nenyi. Nenyi, the Uncreated One, Shaper of all that existed, was neither male nor female, and could not be contained in a body. He gave his whisperer to help the people. He gave the ancient ones as well, and Keethior was one of those.

Isika had stitched herself, too, just a few lines of brown thread trapped in a green light. It was a grim scene to embroider, she thought, as she looked it over, and the corners of her mouth quirked up. Her embroidery wasn’t the flowers and butterflies that Auntie had first taught her.

But she needed to keep the story of what had happened when the Desert King had attacked the city, record it all somehow. Her father was the Desert King. It hurt her every day. She had always wondered who her father truly was and whether he was some majestic, strong person who could come and rescue her, who could justify her existence, her right to be here as future queen. But as it turned out, he was the most dreaded enemy of the Maweel, and even of much of their continent.

Isika could never be glad that he was her father.

Jabari told her it didn’t matter. “So many of us are rescued, many of us have parents who have thrown us away,” he said, referring to the child sacrifices the Workers made, when children were sent out in boats to die and the Maweel rescued them and adopted them into families.

But Isika knew that wasn’t the same as having the Desert King as your father. He was evil, a true enemy, a follower of Mugunta, the evil one. And she was World Whisperer, the one meant to protect Maweel, but it turned out she had a foreign strain of magic that could destroy them all. It was the answer to a puzzle that had long confused the Maweel elders.

When the World Whisperer came back, everything should have been made right again, and yet it hadn’t been. In fact, things had grown worse, and now they all knew the reason. It had shaken them all to their very bones and might shake them so hard they wouldn’t survive. But what was happening exactly? Where was the poison coming from? Was it because he wanted her? He had tried to get her to come with him. Perhaps he was attacking with poison to get her to move to his side. Or were the problems and fighting and poison because of Isika herself, because of her mixed blood, the warrior strain that tainted her?

She sighed and made another stitch. This was what kept her up at night. She touched the green stitches that represented the light that had captured her and paralyzed her all those months ago. She had been working on it all day, trying to express the way it felt to be trapped under her father’s gaze.

“Isika?” Karah hissed. “Are you paying attention? I believe these men are here for you.”

Isika looked up, startled, then smiled to see the three Karee men who had asked to remain in the city of Azariyah after the battle with the Desert King. The Karee were a conquered nomadic people, sometimes forced to fight for the king, and these three had been fighters in his force but no longer wanted to be. Isika had advocated to have them brought into the family of the Maweel and the elders had agreed. They looked toward her with soft, hopeful eyes, and all three bowed to her as she nodded at them.

She thought again of how strongly they resembled her friend Abbas, the Karee warrior prince who had helped her escape a prison in the Worker city.

“Honor be on your heads,” Andar said. “What is your petition?”

One of the men stepped forward and spoke in the heavy Karee accent. He was tall, with a long black braid that swung to his waist. The Karee had heavy brows, deep set eyes, and high cheekbones. They were tall, wiry, and strong.

“We have recently returned from our journey to find our wives, children, and parents. We brought them back, and though others wanted to come with us, we refused them. But they send a message and a request, which is why we come before you today. People from our village are disappearing, more and more all the time. One will be stolen in the night, from his bed. Two girls will go out to the well to draw water and not come back. They vanish, and we can’t find them. Even our great healer can’t hear their voices anymore. Their connection with us has been severed. We need help to find them. Will you help us?”

Isika stared at the men with a sinking heart. She had assumed, like a child, that bringing the men into Maween would be a new beginning, that it would be simple for them to come to Maween, become Maweel, and be happy.

But as she looked at the worried faces of the three men, brows furrowed in grief over their missing tribe members, she saw how far the problems stretched in front of her. With each increasing act of mercy, a new one needed to unfold. With each moment of wisdom, more understanding would be required. She could barely breathe.

There was a pause. Then Ivram spoke, his voice gentle. “We will consider your request,” he said. “We are busy addressing the problems of our own people, and as a rule, we do not interfere in other lands.”

Isika looked at him sharply. She and Ivram had been arguing over this for as long as she had known him. And as she grew more aware of the lands and seas around the little land of Maween, she could see what a small dent they were making in all the trouble, and she started to understand why they kept to themselves and took care of their own lands, because where would it end?

“We will consider your problem,” Ivram went on, “and give you our decision. You may come back one week from now and hear our answer.”

The men murmured to one another. They bowed their heads and turned to move away.

But at the last moment, one of them looked up at Isika and asked, “Lady, will you help us? Time runs through our hands, and we are losing our people. Will you help us?”

Isika stared at the man, her eyes burning. It seemed that he stood there holding the sorrow of the world out to her in both hands, begging her to intervene. But what could she do? She was only one girl.

She nodded gently. “I must confer with the elders and I will respect their decision, but sir, my heart goes with you and with the people you seek. Please give my love to your wives and children and parents, and let us know if you need anything to settle in.”

He nodded, and the three men turned and left, and the gold on their ankles and wrists clinked softly with their steps.

The next person in line came forward suddenly, wearing a dark cloak. She looked up, the cloak fell away from her, and Isika gasped. Her own sister, Aria, stood there in the petitions line like a farmer with a dispute, not a sister to the World Whisperer.

“Aria!” she cried.

She looked at the elders for help and saw that they were confused too. Aria could come and speak to the elders anytime. Why was she standing in a line? One day she would be sister to the queen of the Maweel.

Aria stared back at Isika, and there was such anger mixed with love and longing in her eyes that Isika felt as though hot, sharp claws were pressing into her skin.

“Aria, what is it?” Karah asked.

And Aria began to speak.