Ausma Khan - The Blue Eye

Ilea’s warning … the taste of Daniyar’s fear … the significance of Arian’s absence. All trace of pretense fell away.

He turned back to Ilea, ignoring the Silver Mage. He raised a hand to untangle the golden coils of her hair, a gesture she allowed. When they’d fallen free of their intricate arrangement, he brushed back a lock from her forehead. Then he pressed his lips to her diadem and whispered, “It isn’t just the words, is it? It’s the qari who recites them—the gift given to the First Oralist.”

She blinked, and he finished softly, “A gift you do not share.”

Bitter acknowledgment in her golden eyes.

“Tell me your truth now, Ilea.”

He had already guessed at the answer. The High Companion could recite verses from the Bloodprint, but without the depths of Arian’s conviction, without the gift for language that had seen Arian rise to the rank of First Oralist, she would never be able to harness the power of the Claim as Arian had done. She couldn’t bend it to her will.

She wound her hands around his wrists, removing them from her hair.

“My gifts are aligned to Hira. Ashfall must rely on the strength of the Dark Mage.”

She told these half-truths to the Black Khan without compunction. Why? Daniyar’s thoughts moved swiftly. Because of Hira. The Black Khan had delayed her return to the Citadel. And with Arian and the High Companion both absent, Hira was at risk. Ilea would know as well as he did that the Black Khan would not relinquish any advantage to his city. Whatever the extent of the Golden Mage’s powers, Rukh would try to keep her at his side.

What Ilea had shown him—what she had done with the Claim—was designed to prove to Rukh that her talents would serve him no further. She couldn’t do what Arian had done.

A misdirection the Black Khan would accept, knowing that of all the Companions of Hira, only Arian’s gifts existed to serve more than her allegiance to the Council. Arian had shown him as much with her defense of the people of Ashfall. Though her Audacy was directed by the High Companion, she had chosen her own means of fulfilling it. And even after Ilea had stripped her of rank, she hadn’t given up the fight. Daniyar felt a fierce throb of pride at Arian’s defiance of Ilea. Her service on behalf of the Council wasn’t that of blind adherence. Her calling was to the Claim—and the ethics that underlined it.

No ritual without purpose, she had whispered to him in another life, the whisper tinged with love.

And he had understood. Without a commitment to the values they espoused, rituals meant little to Arian, a position that often placed her at odds with the Council. Even the story of the Night Journey, a sacred visitation to the heavens, Arian viewed as an allegory, and not as a physical voyage, as so many of her sisters did.

No form without substance. No sacred duty more hallowed than the worth of a single life.

The words had meant more to him after the fall of Candour. They defined them both in opposition to the Talisman.

In whose name was our heritage set to the fire? Daniyar had demanded.

And the Talisman’s acolytes had answered, In the name of the One.

He pushed down the familiar ache caused by Arian’s absence. It was a weakness Ilea would exploit, at the moment he needed to turn her to his purpose. Which was to keep her in Ashfall, until Rukh could learn to harness his abilities as the Dark Mage.

He’d felt something stir at the way Rukh watched him, a prickling of his nerves along the tendrils of his magic. An awakening that the Conference of the Mages would fulfill. He recalled the Conference he’d been summoned to in Timeback, where he’d visited the scriptorium and sifted through its manuscripts, including one where the arguments of theologians had gone around in circles, perhaps like this Conference now. The memory passed from his thoughts as suddenly as it had come.

“Let us return,” he said, holding out Ilea’s chair. She pressed her lips together in refusal.

“Why try again?” Rukh asked. “The High Companion’s powers—”

Daniyar cut him off. “The High Companion lacks the First Oralist’s ability with the Claim, but she is still the Golden Mage. She can awaken your gifts. As she said, Ashfall must rely on itself. It needs the power of its Mage.” And now he made use of the Black Khan’s persistence to further his own resolve. “Your power is merely dormant. I felt it stir, as you must have felt mine.” They could and would hold the Emissary Gate. “The Golden Mage can help to bring your powers to life. As can I.”

A narrowing of Rukh’s eyes. A hand at Ilea’s elbow, as he urged her back to the table.

“You used the Claim to open the Conference,” he pointed out.

Daniyar nodded. “A ritual.” No ritual without purpose. “Just as the dawn rite is a ritual.”

“Wherein lies its power?”

A question that cut to the heart of things. One for which he had the answer.

“In the strength you have to wield it. In the use you would make of it.” His silver eyes shone, his words deadly as a blade. “Can you think of a suitable use?”

Eyes of midnight glittered in response.

A KNOCK ON THE DOOR TO THE CHAMBER. THIS TIME ONE OF THE Zhayedan’s runners came to bring news of the Talisman’s maneuvers and of Arsalan’s response.

The Black Khan excused himself—no closer to retrieving his power—leaving Daniyar and Ilea alone in the room. The closing of the maghrebi doors cut off the cries of battle as suddenly as a blade thrown at an unprotected throat.

The High Companion reached for Daniyar’s hands. Silent and watchful, he let her hold them. The act reinforced their mutual power; otherwise he wouldn’t have permitted her touch.

“You still don’t trust me.” His hands clenched on hers, a betraying gesture. He eased the pressure of his grip, but not before they both felt the rise of their magic. In a few more hours, it would be dawn, and the dawn rite would be possible. That was all that was holding him in Ashfall. Were it not for his commitment to the Conference, he would have been on Arian’s trail.

That didn’t mean he needed to respond to the High Companion with anything other than the truth. “Why would I trust you, Ilea? You’ve stood between me and Arian from the first.”

She looked into eyes like frozen silver lakes, eyes that had gazed into the void. But what was the void to Daniyar? The Talisman’s desolation of his city? Or the loss of the woman he wanted for his own? Her fingers stroked his callused palms, the touch deliberately careful to contrast with pitiless words.

“One man’s desires cannot undo centuries of tradition. There is no place for a man at the side of a Companion of Hira.”

“Liar.” Her hands jerked at the accusation. “How long after you arrived at the Citadel did you take the Black Khan as your lover?”

“He is a tool I use to further the Citadel’s aims; he means nothing to me beyond that. What you seek from Arian is something else entirely.”

She studied the flawless arrangement of his bones, wondering how to unsettle a man as dangerous as he was beautiful. One who had every reason to oppose her.

He proved that with his response. “You seem to have forgotten my gift.”

Ilea had forgotten. For the Silver Mage possessed the ability to discern the lies she told from the truth, a gift given to those who held the title of Authenticate.

“You tore her from me,” he said now. “With no thought to her needs when she’d already suffered such loss. Your duty as High Companion is to serve the Companions of Hira.”

“You need not teach me a duty I have never failed to honor.”