Sorcery in Alpara, Chapter 1

It was happening again.

The tortured gasps of her husband’s breath worried Tesha more than usual. With her handkerchief, she wiped away the beads of sweat that ran down Hattu’s face despite the cool evening. His gaze swept the twisted trees and briar thickets that surrounded the royal encampment. Only the gods knew what threats he imagined lurking there—not the actual dangers that distressed her. A familiar dread tightened low in her belly. His alarm would escalate if she couldn’t calm him.

Their weeks’ long journey from Lawaza to King Hattu’s capital, Alpara, was almost over. They had retired for the night in dense woods apart from Hattu’s troops. The campfire generated more smoke than brightness, weighting the air so that it stuck in the back of Tesha’s throat. These close surroundings and the fading light only added to Hattu’s growing uneasiness. Too much like that cell he’d been locked in.

Tesha shifted her stool closer to Hattu’s and put her arm around his shoulders. Hattu’s gaze ricocheted around the forest. Under her fingers, his shoulders seized as hard as stone. He jumped to his feet with a hoarse scream, knocking her to the ground.

“Get back,” he shouted, staring at empty space.

She pushed onto her scraped palms and scrambled up.

He thrust his hand into the fire and snatched a burning branch. Ignoring the flames at his fingers, he waved it in front of him. “I will not be crushed.”

Burning embers fell on Hattu’s arm. Fire licked his flesh. Tesha
yelped and knocked the branch from his grip. She clasped her arms
around him to use her body as comfort, but he shuddered and drew
away.

Several days had passed since his last nightmarish vision, and this time was by far the worst. The grim campsite had set him off. His outcry showed he still relived being crushed by those walls of the cell her father had once locked him in, a terror that returned over and over. Haunted by an unnatural fear, he’d grab any inferno to drive back the abyss of darkness.

A good wife should be able to pull him out.

She faced Hattu and pulled him close, her cheek pressed against his chest. His constricted breathing wheezed in her ear. She squeezed away the memory of another burning torch, a shepherd’s wound, and a vulnerability that had awakened a demonic curse. Ishana, my goddess of love and war, give me strength. Stand by me now as you did then. Keep us safe from such evil forces.

“There are no walls to crush us here.” Tesha soothed as she clung to him. “Your army camps around us. Your soldiers will fight to the death to protect you.”

“I’m their king. I should protect them.”

“You always have. You will. This one weakness will pass when you recover from your imprisonment.”

Perhaps this concern for his nearby soldiers would quiet him. He couldn’t afford for his panic to be overheard again. She’d already noticed his men looking at him with uncertainty.

The forest hid from view even the closest tents of Hattu’s soldiers and muffled the sounds of the army cooking and settling for the night. The privacy the trees gave would have been welcome to them as newlyweds, but not in the presence of these shadows that tormented Hattu.

Hattu’s loud cry had sent a different terror through Tesha, a wellfounded one—it might alert Paskan raiders and draw them near. Ever since they’d entered this mountain range the Paskans claimed as their own, she’d feared an attack. The tribes hated her husband and the Hitolian Empire that had driven them from their pasturelands. Even with an army almost a thousand men strong, traveling through disputed territory meant vulnerability to ambushes.

She and Hattu turned at the sound of footfalls crashing in the forest. Hattu’s hand leapt to the dagger at his belt, ready to confront the intruder.

A soldier clad in the saffron-yellow tunic of the royal army burst into the small encampment. He scanned the campsite in confusion, his curved sword held at the ready.

“Sir?” The soldier turned to his king.

Tesha stepped forward, straightening her veil and smoothing her skirts. “Thank you for your attentive watch, but all is well here.”

“But I . . . I heard—”

Hattu shook himself as if tossing off a blanket. “Return to your duties. It’s been a long day and you’ve earned your rest.” He ducked inside the tent in a clear dismissal, but the soldier hesitated.

“All is well,” Tesha repeated more firmly. “Return to your comrades.”

The man shook his head, but he sheathed his sword. Tesha knew what the soldier thought. Hattu’s men had witnessed other displays of their king’s lingering trouble. His army’s confidence in his leadership had to be unquestioned in a kingdom fractured by enemies. If only Hattu’s second-in-command had come running instead, trustworthy Marak who understood his friend’s turmoil and what caused it. Marak had been with her when she had brought Hattu from that windowless cell; he knew it was enough to give any man uncontrollable terrors.

“I foolishly came too close when I added wood and almost caught my skirts on fire,” Tesha said. “King Hattu shouted a warning and pulled me safe.”

The soldier’s brow puckered. He didn’t believe her, and it was vital that he did, that he imagine only the reaction of a concerned husband and nothing more sinister.

She didn’t like it, but she had to convince him with her magic. There was no choice but to hide the damage her father had done to Hattu with that long, lonely confinement. One more day of travel and they’d arrive at his palace, where Hattu could surely recover. He’d led his men through so many successful battles that their confidence in him held despite the recent trials, but more gossip now would harden their suspicions. She had to prevent an irreparable blow to her husband’s authority.

Tesha pulled the gray binding thread from the pouch she wore on her belt and began to work the spell. She had concealed this forbidden magic from her husband as well as the power it gave her to influence moods. Now her fingers moved to bend the soldier’s will, but sometimes she had to use it on Hattu. This secret made her feel disloyal both as a wife and as a priestess of Ishana, but undoing the harm of her father’s actions was her responsibility now.

Between the folds of her full skirt, she tied the first three knots. “It was my mistake,” she said to the guard, who focused his attention on her. “The king protected me. He kept me safe, just as he guides and protects the army through these dangerous lands.” The knots would combine with the words to give them validity in the soldier’s mind. Hattu was an excellent general and a fierce warrior. What should matter to the soldier rang with truth. She hoped it was enough to wipe away this latest damning blot of Hattu’s fears. Tesha’s fingers ached with the increasing labor each knot required as the thread turned unmalleable and resisted her. It felt like bending bronze. The greater the chasm of belief she had to bridge, the harder the knot tying became. The last knot sent bolts of agony through her arms and into her chest. “Fortunately, the king was alert and saved me.”

The wrinkles of worry between the soldier’s eyebrows relaxed. He nodded. “I’ll build up the fire for you. Priestess, you should not do work like that.”

Priestess. Tesha felt a tinge of regret that soon she wouldn’t be called by that familiar form of address. To be crowned Queen of Alpara and the Upper Lands excited her, but at the same time she felt uneasy at the thought of the undetermined duties and untested power that implied. As Priestess of Ishana she knew what to do. As queen she stepped into the unknown.

The soldier placed several logs on the fire, adding some light to the dim campsite. She should have insisted on that earlier.

“Does my sister need me?” Tesha asked the soldier. It bothered her that she couldn’t see Daniti’s tent in this dreadful place. Daniti wasn’t alone, at least. Hattu had insisted Tesha’s two maidservants reside with her blind sister in the large tent intended for the king, putting Daniti’s needs over his and Tesha’s. And Kurala always stayed at Daniti’s side. Her sister found great comfort in snuggling their little flying pet with his soft cat fur and smooth feathered head. But it was still Tesha’s job to take care of Daniti, and she couldn’t even see her tent from here. “Did Daniti ask for me?”

“I don’t think so. Lady Daniti and your serving women retired into their tent.”

Tesha nodded, although she doubted Daniti would have asked for help even if she needed it. Her sister would never admit to a limit to her independence, especially now that Tesha’s marriage created a separation between them. It’d be better when they reached the palace. Everything would be better.

Hattu came out from the tent, his face still flushed.

The soldier bowed to him. “If there’s nothing else?”

Hattu waved a dismissal, then touched Tesha’s shoulder.

The soldier pushed through the shrubbery and disappeared.

Tesha pressed close to Hattu and his arms locked around her. She tilted her head and followed his gaze to where it was fixed on the fire.

Thank the goddess Ishana that the soldier had interrupted Hattu’s imagined return to the pitch-black cell. Redirecting the soldier’s thoughts had been easier than drawing Hattu back. If Hattu was too agitated and didn’t listen to her words, the thread of the binding invocation didn’t work, and sometimes the spiral of terror caught her up also. Worse, each use of the invocation repeated the lie at the core of their marriage. They were newlyweds of only three months, and she wondered how much strain their bond could sustain. This solution had to be temporary.

They held onto each other until his ragged breath eased.

His eyes still held the haunted look that overcame him when these dark visions possessed him.

“I feel that darkness crushing me. I’m suffocating. A king cannot have such fears.”

“They will pass. They are no more real than nightmares—only haunting memories. Don’t think of them. Remember the sign of love Ishana gave to us at our wedding. If the goddess believed you bore an unforgivable flaw, she would not have blessed us so.”

Hattu’s expression softened. Tesha pictured the scene and felt again the melting warmth that had filled her then.

She and Hattu had stood before the towering statue of Ishana on its pedestal of green nephrite. The goddess’s sacred ornaments of jewels and gold glittered in the morning sunlight entering through the high windows of the temple sanctuary. They exchanged rings and had their foreheads consecrated with oil. The priest said the prayers and declared her Hattu’s wife in front of her family and the other nobles of Lawaza. The priest considered the ceremony complete.

But the moment that meant the most came next, unplanned. They stood face-to-face beside their goddess, ready for the procession out of the sanctuary. But instead, Hattu pressed her hand against his heart, his hand laid gently over it. At that moment, light burst from the scepter Ishana held and cascaded around them. No wedding had ever received such a clear blessing from the goddess of love and war.

Tesha lifted Hattu’s hand now, surrounded as they were by grim forest, and pressed it to her heart. “Before you took my hand and sealed our love, I was full of fear—for the wedding night, the role I must step into as queen, and a life far from my childhood home. But your gesture and the goddess’s sanctification remind me each time I think of them that I can overcome my fear. You gave me that strength.”

She tipped up her face and Hattu kissed her.

“It has been a long journey,” Tesha said. “You are overwhelmed by exhaustion that lets these worries grow greater than they ought to. We should lie down and rest until dinner is brought.” She ran her hands across his muscled back.

He held her close. “I am tired.”

They went into their tent. Hattu stretched out on the pallet. Tesha slipped off her sandals and unpinned her veil so her long black hair fell free. She cradled herself against Hattu, her arm across his broad chest.

Hattu rubbed a strand of her hair. “In all the world, there is nothing as soft as your hair.” His eyelids already fell heavily.

It was often like this once a fit had passed. A peaceful rest in his own palace in Alpara would mend him. Tesha let her own eyelids fall closed.

Sounds in the forest around them edged Tesha awake. At first she thought it was the servants bringing their meal. From a distance came the sound of pounding hooves and voices raised in alarm.

Hattu raised his head.

“What is . . .?” Before she could finish her thought, Hattu had jumped up.

He grabbed his sword belt, which was slung over Tesha’s dowry trunk. “That’s fighting. Paskans. Stay hidden.”

“Paskans? But . . .”

The shouts came louder. “I’ll send guards here.”

Tesha nodded and got to her feet.

Hattu ducked through the tent flap.

Tesha tried to tie and pin her veil, but her fingers faltered and she tossed it onto the pallet. Terror flooded into her. She had heard ugly stories about what the Paskans did to captive women. Barefoot, she raced from her tent toward her sister.

Sharp stones pierced her feet, and briars snagged her skirt as she shoved through the forest. Ahead, she saw the large tent where Daniti was attended by Tesha’s two serving women.

Kety, Hattu’s Egaryan slave-groom who had grown attached to Tesha and Daniti, crouched next to the tent. He stuck close, their self-appointed protector despite his scrawny size.

The tent flap fell back and Daniti appeared in the opening with the maidservants.

“Go inside,” Tesha called, running toward her. “We’re under attack.”

Kety’s small figure bolted from beside the tent like an angry cat, teeth bared and hissing.

Emerging from the forest, two men with swords drawn vaulted forward. Hattu’s guards? Their brown clothing registered. Not Hattu’s men. Tesha shrieked and dodged. Kety jumped between her and the raiders, pointing the wooden amulet hanging from his neck at the men. A bright light flashed from the carved figure toward the foremost raider’s sword, and the weapon flew from his hand.

The raider cried out, grasping his wrist in pain. “Grab the queen!”

The second man raced toward the tent. “Servants also?”

“Leave them.”

Tesha pointed and screamed to Kety, “Daniti!”

Kety snapped his head around and scooped up the fallen sword as he and Tesha darted toward her sister. The injured man scrambled after them.

The terrified maidservants clung to Daniti and yelped like wounded dogs, but the raider slammed into them with the hilt of his sword, knocking them backward as he grabbed Daniti.

Tesha and Kety reached Daniti at that same moment, Kety holding the sword with both hands. The disarmed raider snatched Kety’s shoulder and twisted him away. Kety swung the curved blade at the man’s middle, bringing both the man and himself down with the force of his movement.

The Paskan bellowed in pain, but he signaled the other Paskan onward. “Take her. Go.” He fell back, blood soaking his tunic.

The raider seized Daniti and swung her over his shoulder. She shrieked and pounded her fists against the man.

“No, let her go!” Tesha screamed.

Tesha pulled at Daniti, trying to drag her off the man, but the raider held her sister tight. He swung at Tesha with his sword. She swerved back, the blade ripping her tunic and grazing her skin. Her legs tangled in her skirt and she crashed to the ground.

With Daniti over his shoulder like a sack of grain, the Paskan headed toward the forest. He called out a command, and a previously unseen Paskan cantered from the foliage with two horses.

Tesha pushed herself up.

Marak’s war cry reverberated over the clearing. Hattu’s second-in-command was coming.

Kety darted after the Paskan, ducking when the raider threw a dagger at him. It bounced off the flash of light from his amulet, but this delay gave the Paskan the moment he needed. He flung Daniti up, spreading her legs astride a horse, then mounted behind her. They plunged through the trees, and the horse without a rider went with them at a fast pace.

Accompanied by several soldiers, Marak broke through the undergrowth and stopped short in the clearing. Tesha called to him and pointed to where the mounted Paskans had disappeared. “They took Daniti.”

Kety whinnied again and again. Tesha guessed this was some command Kety used to speak to horses. He had a mystical way with animals. With a clatter of hooves, the riderless beast cantered back.

Kety grabbed the reins and tossed them to Marak. “They go. They go.” He waved into the forest.