Chapter 2: Rains of Silver Blue

Part One

It was hard. It was harder for Anaka - harder because she hadn't as much stepped out of the village by one long-span. But she didn't complain. When they'd started out that morning, Andori had thrown her and Zhrom's sandals away. That was hint enough. But when he took off on a gait that was uncomfortably between a walk and a run and then kept it up for oh, about four high arcs now, she had understood that there was to be no easy way to wherever Andori was leading them. His words to her at the Awakening came back with a sting.

That morning, Anaka had said goodbye to Umriel. Umriel - which had provided her with a lot of beatings, warnings, abuses and a few very cherished moments of love. It had been hard to say farewell to Hjgio, but Anaka surprised even herself when she found that she couldn't pass by her mother in indifference. There was something about her mother's tears that morning - tears that were flowing even when she didn't want Anaka to see her cry. Anaka had surprised her by hugging her hard, and sobbing for a while on her shoulder. She had been even more surprised when her mother hugged her back with frantic strength, her hands around her shoulder not wanting to let go. For the first time since she remembered, Anaka had willingly and lovingly kissed her mother's cheek.

Hjgio had watched the scene with a smile. He didn't have any words for Anaka, they just stood facing each other for a while - Anaka smiling even while crying and Hjgio's eyes showing a twinkle or two of tears that will forever be in debt. She hugged her father until Andori's raised voice told them that it was time to go. Her father gave her his staff and she took it automatically. It was after she had walked a few steps that she felt the strong hardy wood around her palm.

"Papa!" she'd turned and called.

Hjgio had smiled as she stood there in a mixture of delight and surprise that quickly overshadowed her unhappiness.

"Go Anaka, May the will of the Goddess serve you. And never forget what I told you."

Anaka turned and ran to where Andori was standing, his manner restless and Anaka thought, a little angry. She didn't quite understand what her father didn't want her to forget. But whatever it was, Anaka knew that Hjgio's every word would be in her heart forever.

Anaka didn't see Thisme. It was another one of the quirks of Umriel, "Bad luck befalls a woman who steps outside at the hands of a brother." Anaka smiled. Even without Thisme, the farewell had been hard enough. She promised upon the Goddess that she would find a speedrunner at the first opportunity to tell Thisme the story of her journey.

And so it began. And it seemed as if it will never end. It was almost noon now and the twin suns were beating down on them with all the heat of spring. Andori's pace hadn't gone down since they started. It hadn't gone up either but that was not something she liked to think about. What was surprising was that they didn't walk together. Even though the path was wide enough for three, Andori walked as if he owned the way - right down the middle. His manner boasted of arrogance and strength.

But it was deserved and earned arrogance, Anaka thought. No other person could have changed Umriel so much in a day. Andori's manner had again changed a lot since they came out of the village. Though he hadn't talked much - and when he did, it was a single word - it seemed as if the air around him shifted to become more reserved and much less easygoing. There were so many people inside this blue-skinned man that it would be hard to keep count after a while. His blue-skin was mostly covered now by a long white robe; that was probably wise since it was best not to attract any attention while traveling. Right now, it would seem to any who looked upon them that it was a father rushing on an important visit and his daughter and son trailing behind him.

But that was far from the case. The man was a High Priest of Shinza, the girl who was beautiful and yet strong was a Sorceress, and the boy behind her was a knight - newly recruited to the Order of Shinza.

Anaka didn't know anything about the knight - her knight. That wasn't because they hardly had any time to talk - even if they were on a caravan and Andori was talking his head off, Anaka doubted whether she would've joined in and she certainly wouldn't have talked to Zhrom alone. It wasn't because she was shy. There was a measure of shyness involved, but Anaka was about as independent as a girl could get. She particularly didn't feel the need to talk to other people. She would talk to Andori because it was obvious that she had a lot to learn from him, but Zhrom was just like her - he too was an apprentice. She liked the idea of having a knight to command though, and when she had the time, she was sure that she would test out what the limits on those 'commands' were.

Anaka smiled and then grimaced as her foot caught on a rough stone. It put her behind Andori a bit, and she rushed to catch up. Andori hadn't turned to look back since they started and Anaka had the feeling that if one of them stumbled and fell, he wouldn't even notice. Zhrom, behind her was not having an easier time. His feet too had chafed through and by the time the suns rose high, the fierce pace had exhausted him. To add to that, he had a pretty heavy bundle on his back - some things that he thought would be needed but now on looking back he thought he should have trashed - and that weight was pulling on him with every step he took. He stared at the man who was leading them. Zhrom was sure that his pack weighed much less than Andori's. He'd seen things go into that pack that must've weighed a thousand ekks. Yet, Andori barely sweated at all. Goddess! He wasn't even out of breath.

Andori led them through the path with the same inhuman pace till noon stretched out to the first afternoon arc. Quite suddenly, the path which had crisscrossed through nameless villages and smaller settlements came, and almost ran into, a large building. It was, even to Anaka's unfamiliar eye, an inn. For a moment it seemed as if Andori was going to pass that by, and if that were the case, Anaka was going to find it hard to not suddenly start screaming, but thank the Goddess he stopped and whispered in that silvery voice of his.

"We stop here and rest until night. The lodgings and food won't be what you've been used to, but we'll make do with what we have. Always be polite."

The speech done, he walked to the door. It was an old building, the wood torn out in some places, eaten through in others. The door had seen ages of closing and banging and slamming and smothering until it was weighed down by repair boards that tried to make it go on through another rain or so. Andori stepped in and Anaka and Zhrom followed him into the inn. The front-room of the inn that they entered was mostly empty. There were a few old men at their chairs in the very distance, but they were more like furniture than people.

A young girl minded the table. She looked up for an instant when the door opened. Anaka saw that she was younger than her, and she had a plain face that was distorted in a scowl. She didn't look like she wanted anybody to lodge. Andori walked up towards her and said that they would like a room for a moon.

"Three," the girl didn't look up from where she was sweeping the floor and her voice was directed towards the floor. Anaka was trying to guess what 'three' meant when she saw Andori flick three silver coins on the table. The girl still didn't look up, and Anaka followed Andori up to the second story of the building up a staircase that was more a ladder and into what faintly resembled a hay-loft. Anaka looked around - there were no beds anywhere. Andori took off his pack and rested it on the ground.

"Eat," he said, "I hope you have brought some food. Eat and then try to sleep. You have until the moon wakes up. Do not disturb me."

And then he walked away to the end of the room and laid down on the hard floor and seemed to go to sleep, leaving Anaka gawking at him in surprise.

Andori obviously expected her to sleep on the floor, and after the hard day, Anaka had been expecting something of that sort. She could eat, and sleep, but she had other... needs. A sigh escaped from her as she knelt down on the floor and loosened her pack. She didn't have to carry a lot, but the pack was a little bit too short for her height and as the day went on, it had scraped against her shoulder till it ached. Her whole body throbbed in several places - even her eyes complained from being in the sun so long and she hadn't felt this tired or this unclean since she could remember. As she fumbled around in her pack looking for the lunch that her mother had packed for her that morning, her eyes took in the room.

It was a hayloft. There was still some hay from an unknown harvest piled up in some parts of the floor - possibly to hide the cracks in the wood - and the smell of better times hung in the air like a mist never forgotten.

She had almost resigned herself to the fact that she had to go without or possibly ask the girl in the room downstairs when she found out the privates. The reason she didn't notice it earlier was because it was unlike any bath or private that she had seen before. It had a half-door opening at the waist, and inside, a cistern of water and something that vaguely resembled a hole. Anaka was looking inside, trying to find a way to go about the act with both Zhrom and Andori in the room when she saw Zhrom's eyes on her. They both looked at each other for a while, both of them not knowing what exactly to say - but it was Zhrom who spoke.

"I will wait downstairs. When you finish... the bath call me up."

And without another word, he walked down the partly broken stairs leaving Anaka alone with Andori. One look at the man as he lay stretched out on the floor on her far left told her that it would be a mistake to disturb him. Anaka went inside and closed the half door. She stared at the sleeping form for a while, but the light hid his eyes and Anaka couldn't make out whether they were open or not. She looked at the water in the tank and it looked more inviting than any bath that she had had in her life.

Anaka sighed. Sometimes, necessity broke some rules. What if Andori could see? She turned to the tank and shed her clothes and wrapped it around the half-door. The water was chillingly cold - even at a time when the twin-suns above were razing down everything with their heat. It caused her skin to rise in goose-bumps and various bruises on her body to slowly yell out for attention. Her feet were the worst. They were broken and cracked and bleeding in several places and they hurt when the water settled down on them. When she'd finished she put the same clothes on - they didn't make her smell like the Goddess but they were the hardiest clothes that she had. If Andori was going to push them like this, she was going to wear down her clothes quickly. Necessity could break rules only every so often.

As she put her clothes on, she thought about Zhrom. He'd certainly shown a bit of understanding and Anaka's attitude towards him shifted just a notch from the wary distance that she liked to maintain from everybody. As she finished dressing and opened the half-door into the room, and found Andori still sleeping. She decided that she would try to be a little nice to Zhrom. He seemed to be even more wary around strangers than she was.

She went downstairs and told Zhrom that she had finished. When he climbed the stairs back into the room, Anaka went too. She told him that the water was a bit cold, that there was a particularly sharp projection in the mug that could poke you in the wrist if you were not careful and that Andori seemed to be fast asleep. Talking like Aleen did, did not come naturally to Anaka, especially when Zhrom did not verbally acknowledge anything she said. He just nodded, picking up some fresh clothes from his pack - clothes much hardier than her own and then walking to the half-door.

Anaka watched him get in and close the door. Zhrom hung his clothes on the door and turned to Anaka.

"Well," he said, something like a hint of a smile on his face.

"What?" Anaka asked.

"Aren't you going to leave?" Zhrom asked, a smile breaking out on his face.

Anaka blushed and quickly walked away from the room and went downstairs. She found a nice chair to sit that was beside an open window and stared outside. What was she thinking in the room? Anaka didn't like embarrassments. In fact, she resented them with all the hatred that her sixteen rains could muster. Zhrom's scale quickly turned all the way back to a wary stranger.

After Zhrom called her up, they ate the meal in silence. Zhrom offered her something from his meal, but she refused. After that they didn't talk, they quickly finished the meal and Zhrom settled off to sleep at the other corner of the room - far away from Andori, and Anaka settled between them. A good six hands separated them from each other, but Anaka's first sleep outside Umriel was on the floor of a smelling haystack, between a Priest and a knight in training. As sleep came to her quicker than she thought it would, Anaka realized that the way to wherever the Goddess wanted her to go would be much harder than she could imagine.

Andori woke her up with a shove that felt to her like a strong kick on her behind. He had only three words for her and Zhrom - who had been similarly roused from his sleep. His voice slithered into their waking dreams and told them that they had to go. Anaka, in a state of sleeping wakedness suddenly glanced out through a window.

Darkness greeted her.

Goddess! They were going to travel by the moon! Anaka thought back to Andori's words when they stopped. She had thought that he didn't mean that so literally. The cold night air settled around her tired bones like ice on a newly-frozen lake and it made every motion that she made akin to something done in a trance. When she walked down the stairs, half slipping on a step and managed to open the unhinged door to step outside, with Zhrom just behind her, they saw that Andori was already a sizable distance away. Thank the Goddess that the moon was bright today. Anaka sprinted after him, and slowly caught up to him. Andori was maintaining that same pace that Anaka had trouble matching - if it were a little faster then it would have been a steady run, a little slower and a fast walk. The pace that he ran in was a bit between the two and it was harder now that it was night.

Much harder. She realized how much when she tripped over an errant stone and felt flat on her face, bruising her nose in the process. She fought not to cry out. A trickle of blood ran down her nose into her lips. She looked forward and saw that she was right. Andori wasn't stopping. Zhrom, who was behind her, stopped and started to help her up. She shrugged his hands away and got up, running a little more to catch up to Andori. The taste of blood was salty, but Andori's disdain was saltier. In the dim light of the bright moon, Anaka's eyes glowed.

It was much the same routine for the next four moons. They would travel from when the moon rose to when the suns were beating down on them from up in the sky. Then sleep - often at a wayside inn or more often on bare earth. And then again when the moon rose another gruesome ten high-arcs of travel. Anaka soon lost whatever reservations she had about privacy, though she took care to be alone when she took care of her needs. At the end of the third moon, Anaka did a little bit of calculation in her head before the dreamless sleep claimed her - she found that she had slept half the day and traveled the other half. Three more moons like that and she was sure the Goddess would claim her life.

Three more moons didn't kill her. At the end of the sixth moon of travel, they were sitting on hard earth eating a deer than Andori had caught and then roasted over a quickly-made fire. Lack of proper sleep, good food and all that traveling had made her almost perpetually tired. She ate all of her share though - as that was the only thing her body was running on.

She woke up that night with just a few arcs of sleep and found that she had bled through her pants.

Thank the Goddess! It had started at night. She quietly snuck off towards a stream that Andori had pointed out to them when they stopped and washed the blood off her. She got out a thick pad of cotton that she had brought for the purpose from her pack and wrapped it around her privates. Then she put on a fresh pair of clothes. Anaka was worried. She was not to start bleeding till about five moons from now. Perhaps all that travel had brought it about sooner. When she went back to sleep, her dreams were troubled and unwell.

It was as she feared. The first spell of pain caught her in the middle of the next morning, causing her to slip and lose her balance a bit. She knew that it would come progressively sooner until her legs were all but unusable for the next moon or so. It was a sickness that she wasn't particularly proud of - back in Umriel she used to spend the moon reading, but resting was evidently not an option here. She was fighting not to show the pain when they stopped for their rest that noon. Andori repeated his speech - the same speech that they had been hearing for the last seven moons now and Anaka was beginning to think that he was going to lead them all the way around Kharke and back to Umriel. With Andori, anything was possible.

The pain got progressively worse until Anaka resigned herself for a night without sleep. Her eyes still had the steely determination in them that she had when she'd seen Andori walk forward without a backward glance, but she knew that there was no way she was going to lift a leg when the moon rose. The sun had started to go down and the lukewarm air of dusk suddenly felt very oppressive. When the moon rose and Andori came and called her, she would have to tell him that she couldn't continue. They would have to stop.

Because of her.

Because she was a woman.

She didn't want to think any more about things like that. She focused on the pain and willed it to go away. It only worsened. She had never had her pains this way - every ripple brought out an ache that was greater than the one before and before long, she was curled up on the ground, trying hard not to wake anybody.

"Sorceress," she heard over the pain. It was Zhrom.

"Sorceress," he whispered, "What is the matter?"

Anaka opened her eyes and looked at him. She couldn't see his face in the darkness, but his voice was anxious. For a moment, Anaka didn't know what to do. She couldn't tell him! But then, something Hjgio said came back to her, "One is only as weak as one's fears." It didn't make any sense to her then, it didn't make any more sense now - but Anaka spoke before she thought what she was saying.

"It's my bleeding. Sometimes, it is very painful." She blushed before she completed the sentence.

"Are you early?" he asked.

Even in the middle of her pain, Anaka was surprised. He obviously knew about women's matters.

"Yes."

"I shall wake up Andori," he said and quickly turned away.

Anaka panicked - she didn't want Andori to know; she yelled, "No!" which made Zhrom stop and stare back at her. For a moment, Anaka was afraid that her loud voice had already woken Andori up, but a few thimbles of steady breathing later, she continued.

"No," she said, "Don't."

"Why?" Zhrom's voice in the darkness was puzzled.

She had no reason that she could give him.

"I just don't want you to."

Zhrom stayed there for a while. He had half a mind to go wake up Andori, but something made him stop. He knew that this girl wasn't like all the girls he knew. She wore her pain with honor and perhaps she didn't want Andori to know her weakness. Zhrom could sympathize. Better, he had something that could help.

Zhrom looked her over. She was obviously in a lot of pain. Every ripple caused her body to go taut. He placed a hand on her forehead and saw that she was a little feverish too. He went back to his pack and rummaged through it for a while, looking for the strawroot. It was, at best, a temporary measure - but it ought to help. He got some water from the river in a bowl and slowly mixed the strawroot into a paste. He hurried back to Anaka, but after a slight hesitation, he went back to his pack and got out his bottle of 'asmeida.

When he reached her, Anaka was groaning, her whimpers an unbroken tenor that pained the night. He knelt before her and shook her until her eyes focused on him.

"I can do something to help the pain, Sorceress," Zhrom whispered, "but you should trust me."

It took Anaka a while before she understood what he was saying. She nodded. It couldn't make her feel worse in any case.

When she felt his hands undoing the band of her skirt, she jerked back in shock.

"Trust me," he whispered in the darkness.

Goddess! How could she... He was kneeling before her and the moon caught his eyes. For the first time, Anaka noticed that they were green. No, not green, just a faint hint of an olive. They had something in them that Anaka had seen in her papa's eyes before - something she didn't understand but she instinctively trusted. She was too weak to resist anyway.

He efficiently removed her skirt. Anaka could feel him working with something in a bowl in the darkness. Suddenly, she felt cold hands on her left thigh. The pain receded the instant his hands touched her. She looked at the figure that was tending her in shock. How did he do that?

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice low.

"It's just a paste. It could help, but you have to rest."

"What is it?"

"Strawroot. If it was after sunrise, I could've found something better. But this should do for now."

Strawroot. Strawroot was the universal remedy for all manner of pains. There was no way it was helping her so. Suddenly, an intense spasm of pain passed through her and she groaned - all thoughts forgotten.

Zhrom worked quickly and thoroughly. After he had finished both legs, he helped her into the skirt and buttoned it up at her waist. Before he went away, he took a small bottle in his hand and dipped his finger into it and held it before her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Something to help you sleep," he said.

The last thing Anaka remembered that night was the strangely pungent smell on his finger that drowned her in sleep.

When she was awoken and the moon was up, Anaka knew that the pain in her legs was gone. Her legs were still weak, and there was a slight numbing pain in her waist that was a sign of an illness cured too easily, but it was nothing compared to the last moon. She wanted to talk to Zhrom but Andori herded them up too quickly and began the Walk.

She had named it the Walk. It had taken all of five moons and more to follow Andori's style of traveling. It was a gait that was seemingly designed to provide the maximum distance with the minimum effort. And it was almost as hard as learning to walk again. But after seven moons, she found that she could keep his pace better even though her body was diminished by lack of food and even worse, a lack of proper sleep. With her pains gone, Anaka found it much easier to follow the blue-skinned man as their paths twisted and turned as it followed the river through its course. And she was sure the Walk would help her in the moons to come, if only to keep up with Andori.

With a bit of a relapse from her pain and her troubles, Anaka began looking at the sights around her as they traveled. She was extremely weak in the geography of the area, and though she knew that the villages that they were passing through, the crossroads that they came to, the streams that they drew their water from all had their names, she had no idea what those were. It was part of the bane when you were brought up in Umriel. The village considered itself a self-contained universe - there weren't even any books in the library about it. And there was so much to ask Hjgio about that Anaka couldn't be blamed if she forgot about geography.

Anaka knew that the places around her were beautiful. Much greener and redder and bluer than the gray of Umriel and much livelier than the staid close-mouthedness of the villagers that she'd known. Every once in a while, small village boys would run with them for a while and they tried to engage this curious party in conversation. Andori ignored them and so did Anaka and Zhrom. After a while, they would grow tired of the party's curious pace and would leave them and run back to their village. As the day bloomed, Anaka took in more interesting sights and she was almost sad when she saw the suns come up over her head.

When they stopped to rest, Andori informed them - in the same even tones - that they were coming to the end of this part of their journey the next moon. If the Goddess wills, they will be in Azaho before the sun rises the next moon and they would start their training.

Anaka was excited and pleased and that washed away the pains in her bones. Before she slept, and with Andori a safe distance away, she went over to where Zhrom had placed his pack. He was there, rummaging around in the pack - and coming up with a book.

When he saw her, he smiled.

"You are well," he said.

"Thanks to you."

"It is not I who did that sorceress. You should know better. It's the Goddess who decides to heal and pain."

Somehow Anaka didn't think so, but she had the feeling that the subject was something Zhrom didn't want to talk about and so she let it go. Besides she was tired of him calling her sorceress.

"My name is Anaka, not sorceress." She said, her voice a little hard, but she was smiling.

He laughed. "And mine is Zhrom, and I'm not any knight." He was smiling but his eyes were unexplainable.

Anaka smiled. Without saying another word, she went back to her pack. She understood what he'd said. He was a knight - he was her knight, but her commands would have to be measured and sieved. She would have to earn his respect. There were so many layers to this boy from her village, but Anaka - after last night - knew that she would trust him with anything.

It seemed like the moon came up before she started to sleep. Andori's words that they were nearing their goal spurred her on. There was perhaps twenty or so long-spans to go, and the long travel would finally be over. But the last moon turned out to be the longest. It was dark - darker than the moons before and Anaka had difficulty seeing five hands in front of her. She was blindly following Andori's lead. She seemed to stumble on every stone in the path, and her body finally seemed to tell her that it couldn't do any more.

Suddenly, in the middle of a spell, Andori came to a stop and crouched down. He'd never done this before and Anaka was surprised enough that she almost bumped into him.

"Get down," he whispered.

"What is it?" Anaka asked before she could clamp her mouth shut.

"Kagouri," came the clenched reply.

Anaka suddenly drew in a breath. A kagouri wasn't the deadliest of all predators, but when it was hungry, it could be incredibly vicious - it wouldn't heed any pain and would doggedly pursue its prey. They stayed crouched down on the ground for what seemed like ten arcs.

Andori quietly got up and resumed walking and was soon walking the Walk. He didn't say anything about the incident, but Anaka guessed that the kagouri had run away somewhere else. The rest of the journey passed in relative silence. About a high-arc from daybreak, Andori led them away from the path and on a very small trail through the woods. They stayed close together and moved slowly, for in the darkness they couldn't see much. But the trail was short and though Anaka caught a thorn in her foot, it was done much easier than she thought it would be.

As the first rays of the twin suns grazed the three travelers, they came upon a clearing in the woods. It was just as Andori predicted.

"Azaho," Andori whispered, something like reverence in his voice.

Anaka leaned on Hjgio's staff and stared at the clearing before her. The first light of the morning twinkled onto the clearing. It wasn't large - perhaps a hundred span wide circle, but what made it stand out from the trees was the three massive stone pillars that jutted out in a triangle from the ground and rose high above the trees. There were other smaller stones everywhere but the three held her eyes. There was a vibe coming from them that Anaka could sense from afar - a sense of an Ancient mystery.

"The Stones of Azaho," Andori said answering Anaka's unspoken question.