Ruqiah didn’t react, just fell back into her quiet song, calling to the clouds. Strong hands grabbed her by the ankles and began swirling her around, then rolling her onto her stomach and swirling her some more. Her brown hair matted against her head, and she couldn’t see where her sarong ended and her bare legs began, for they were all the same color then, a mat of muddy clay. She smelled it in her nostrils and tasted it in her mouth.
The torment continued for some time, but Ruqiah didn’t notice, for she had her song, and it was a safe place for her. Up above, the clouds gathered, answering her call.
Finally the older boys let her go, and a chant went up for Tahnood the Conqueror, and the older women sang a song to him, and of him. Ruqiah noted his father, beaming with pride, and noticed her own parents, Niraj standing with a wide and warm smile for her, nodding his gratitude to her for accepting the game with dignity and restraint. Beside him stood Kavita, with her silken black hair. She wore an uncomfortable smile, and tried to nod, but Ruqiah could tell that she was filled with sympathy for her daughter, or perhaps it was simply a silent lament that Ruqiah had been so chosen.
There were implications to this “game,” after all. Tahnood had singled her out, above all others. He had signaled to the Desai that pretty Ruqiah, with her lighter hair and startling blue eyes, would be his choice.
Ruqiah noted that many of the tribe’s girls, some her own age or just a bit older, looked upon her with open hostility now.
“Clean her!” Tahnood’s mother called out, and several other women joined in the call. “The water! The water!”
Ruqiah looked to Niraj, and again he nodded, and offered her a warm smile. She felt Tahnood’s hand grasp her by the wrist, strong but gentle. He pulled her up to her feet and began leading the mud-covered girl to the nearest spigot. They had just arrived, the cold water splashing over her, when a streak of lightning split the sky above, and the accompanying boom of thunder brought with it a sudden and heavy downpour.
Cries of surprise became shouts of joy as all the tribe began to dance and sing, and surely this was a good sign that promising young Tahnood had chosen wisely this wellspring night!
Ruqiah lifted her face to the sky and let the rain wash the mud away.
“You cannot escape me,” Tahnood whispered at her side. “You can never escape me.”
Ruqiah looked at him, almost with pity, and certainly with enough clear amusement to unnerve the boy. So suddenly, in that simple exchanged glance, Ruqiah had gained the upper hand. Tahnood licked his lips nervously and sulked off to dance with the others.
Ruqiah watched him go. Despite his puffery and his near-constant picking on her, she liked the boy. He was playing against high expectations, she knew. Many of the Desai had placed their future hopes upon his slender, boyish shoulders. He had been born of good blood, born to lead, and any failure would crash down around Tahnood many times more heavily than the foibles of other children. Ruqiah could not but sympathize with him.
The rain settled into a stead a disciple of Mielikki,” second y rhythm, shots of lightning occasionally lighting up the clouds above. Ruqiah moved to the spigot and let the cold water pour over her, invigorating her as she rubbed the last of the mud away. She found as she did, though, that she had torn her sarong. With a heavy sigh, she slid across the mud over to her parents.
“Zibrija!” Niraj greeted her. He tousled her wet hair with his thick hand, then pulled her against him for a hug.
“Are you all right, my love?” Kavita asked, bending low to look into Ruqiah’s eyes.
Ruqiah smiled and nodded. “Tahnood would not hurt me,” she assured the woman.
“If ever he did, I would stake him to an anthill!” Niraj proclaimed.
“I may help you, Father,” Ruqiah said, and she showed her parents the tear in her sarong.
“It is nothing,” Kavita assured her, inspecting the rip. “Come, let us fetch another and hang that over the chair to dry. I will sew it in the morning.”
“In the afternoon, you mean!” Niraj said heartily, and he grabbed Kavita by the hands and began to twirl her in a dance. “For tonight is the wellspring and the rain! Oh, the rain! Tonight we dance and we drink, and tomorrow, we sleep through the morn!”
The woman, laughing, spun away from her husband, took her daughter’s hand and started from the celebration. Together they moved down the empty lanes between the many tents. The drumbeat of rain on the tents accompanied them, like the background music of the celebration at the mud pit. Every so often another boom of thunder shook the ground.
“You make your father so proud, Zibrija,” Kavita said to Ruqiah. “The elders watch you closely. They believe that you will be among the leaders of your age. They will train you as such.”
“Yes,” Ruqiah said obediently, though she didn’t think Kavita’s prediction likely-in fact, it seemed impossible to her.
They came around the corner of their tent, and Kavita reached for the flap. She didn’t pull it open, though, and noting that hesitation, Ruqiah looked up to her, then followed Kavita’s frozen expression across the way, to the form of a large man, a man who was not Desai, coming toward them, torch in hand.
“What do you-?” the woman started to say, and she grunted and stepped forward.
She looked down at Ruqiah and pushed her away, whispering, “Run, run!” and there was such pain in Kavita’s voice that Ruqiah knew even before her mother stumbled past her that Kavita had been stabbed.
The swordsman behind Kavita grabbed the woman and threw her in through the tent flap. The other shade-for these were indeed Netherese shades-circled fast to cut off Ruqiah’s escape.
But Ruqiah wasn’t running away. No, she rushed into the tent after her stumbling, falling mother, her little feet splashing in the mud and the blood. She yelped as she crossed in front of the smaller shade, feeling the bite of his blade.
She didn’t care as she desperately scrambled to keep up with her wounded mother. She fell over Kavita as the older woman tumbled in the tent, her lifeblood pouring from a deep wound in her lower back, already too far from consciousness, too near to death, to even respond to Ruqiah’s frantic calls.
“You stabbed the little one, foolCatti-brie wasn’t singing.. d,!” the larger Shadovar said to his companion as they came into the tent.
“Bah, but shut your mouth,” the other said. “Ruqiah, girl, come along now, or your father will be the next to find death at the end of my sword!”
Ruqiah kept calling, but her words were not aimed at Kavita. She had fallen into a special place now, singing the sweet refrains. A scar on her right forearm began to glow as blue as her eyes, the light wafting out of her long sleeve in curious, magical tendrils, as if it were smoke. She felt her hands growing warm as that soft glow enveloped them and she pressed them against the hole in her mother’s back. The blood washed over her, for just a bit, before subsiding.
She could clearly sense her dying mother’s spirit trying to leave the body, then, but she held it in place, her song pleading with Kavita, begging her that it was not time to pass on. Ruqiah put her other hand over her own wound then, feeling her lifeblood dripping from her side, just under her ribs.
“Ruqiah, girl!” the Shadovar said from behind her.
Ruqiah sat back on her heels, moving away from her mother a bit, and slowly rose up from the floor. “My name is not Ruqiah,” she said quietly.
“Just get her,” the other Shadovar said, and she heard the first step coming toward her.
She spun around, blue eyes flashing, now with both sleeves glowing and wafting blue magical energies, like trained serpents of drifting light, reaching forth and twirling around her.
“No!” she cried, and she waved her hand, and a burst of smoke issued forth, right in the smaller man’s face.