Harshini

looked up angrily at Shananara, who had finally lowered her head and opened her eyes. If she was distressed by what the priests were doing to themselves, she gave no indication.

Garet helped Tarja hold the hysterical priest down as Shananara approached. The commandant looked as pale as the powdered paint that coated him.

“Is this your idea of doing no harm?” he snarled at the Queen.

Shananara looked down at the blind priest for a moment before she answered. “This is Xaphista's work, not mine, Commandant. To heal him would mean forcing him to break his faith and he holds that more dearly than his eyes. Even if I could restore his sight and remove his pain, he would just claw his eyes out again as soon as your back was turned.”

There was a strange twisted logic in what she said. A Karien priest would rather suffer and die than acknowledge the existence of the Harshini or the God of Healing. Tarja had no doubt that she could heal him - he had seen the Harshini ability. He also had no doubt that she was right when she claimed the man would simply try to harm himself as soon as they let him out of their sight. They were a sick breed, these priests. The sooner R'shiel did something about Xaphista the better.

“Get him to the infirmary,” Tarja ordered, standing back to let two of the guards pick up the struggling, howling priest.

Tarja looked at the other priests, who had been stunned into silence by the courageous action of their brother. They wore the look of men who thought he had done something to be proud of. How many more of them were contemplating the same thing? Suffering for Xaphista was more than just a hopeful wish for these men; it was damned near a job requirement. He had to put a stop to it. Now.

“The next one of you that tries to harm himself,” he announced loudly, “will be delivered to the Harshini for healing. And he'll stay there until he denounces Xaphista and swears allegiance to the Primal Gods.”

Shananara looked at him in surprise then nodded approvingly as she realised what his threat would mean to these men.

“How long is that going to last?” Garet asked, ineffectively brushing the white dust from his jacket.

“Tarja's threat is very real to these men, Commandant. They will avoid stubbing a toe rather than risk being touched by one of my people.”

Garet stared at her coldly then looked around the Hall. “Did you make this much mess redecorating the dormitories?”

“Not quite.”

“And what the hell is that thing?” he asked, pointing at the crystal on the podium.

“It is the Seeing Stone.”

Garet stopped trying to clean his jacket and stared at the crystal with a thoughtful expression. “I thought that was in Greenharbour?”

“There is also a Stone in Greenharbour. This one belongs here.”

“What does it do?”

“It channels the power of the gods, among other things.”

Garet absorbed that piece of information silently and then looked at the priests. “I suppose we'd better get them out of here. I'll move them to the Lesser Hall.” He looked at Shananara and added frigidly, “Unless of course, you're planning to do this to every building you walk into, Your Majesty?”

“I will not disturb your prisoners again, Commandant,” she assured him.

Garet obviously doubted her word, but did not voice his scepticism. He looked at Tarja and shook his head. “Look at this place, Tarja. They haven't been here a day yet.”

“I'll get everything sorted out,” Tarja promised, not at all certain he believed his own words.

“Well, you can start by making the Harshini clean up this mess. After all, she caused it.” With a pointed and very unfriendly glare in Shananara's direction, Garet Warner moved off to organise moving the Karien priests from the Great Hall.

“I'm sorry, Tarja,” Shananara said as soon as Garet was out of earshot. “I thought only to help by calming the Citadel.”

The Harshini could not lie, so legend claimed, but he wondered if she was bending the truth a little. She must have known what making the priests witness her power would do to them. Or perhaps she really didn't understand. If she couldn't contemplate the thought of violence, how could she imagine a man willing to put his own eyes out?

“The damage is done now. At least the tremors have stopped.”

“That's because the Citadel is awake.”

“Is that going to cause problems?”

She smiled suddenly. “Come and see.”

Grabbing his hand she pulled him towards the doors. He noticed that the bronze sheathing had peeled away and they were now carved with unbelievably intricate knot-work designs that chased themselves across the doors in a complex pattern.

They stepped out of the Hall into a street that was crammed with people. The sun had set, but it was as bright as day. The walls of the Citadel had brightened and dimmed with metronomic precision for two centuries, but now, when they should have faded to darkness, they were burning with vibrant light. Every building he could see was ablaze, banishing the night.

“Founders!” he murmured in awe.

His sentiments were reflected in every face he saw. Although crowded, the street below the Great Hall was strangely silent as the people tried to make sense of what they were witnessing.

Then he heard the noise, like a distant wail of despair, coming from the distance, from the other side of the walls. The Kariens.

“Come with me,” he ordered abruptly, running down the steps. Shananara followed him as he pushed through the crowd. It took a while and a great deal of elbow work to get to the main gate, and he didn't stop when he reached it, or bother to check if Shananara was still with him. He bolted into the gatehouse and up the stairs to the wall-walk to look down over the plain.

The plain below was in chaos. The Kariens seemed to have moved from their earlier panic to utter desperation. Some cried out in horror at the sight that transfixed them. Others were fleeing in terror. Tarja glanced back over his shoulder at the tall towers and then looked down at the walls.

The whole Citadel was glowing like a beacon in the darkness, casting its benign light as far as the bridges over the Saran.

CHAPTER 54

Without consulting him, or giving him a reason, R'shiel announced that rather than return directly to the Citadel, she wanted to check on the progress of Damin and Hablet and the armies they were bringing to relieve the Citadel. He wondered at her decision but did not question it, suspecting that it had much to do with the night they had spent in Sanctuary. She did not want to face Tarja so soon, he guessed, or the Harshini who would know what they had done.

He wanted to explain to her that the unique Harshini way of sharing pleasure was not riddled with the same emotion-laden guilt that humans insisted on attaching to sex. For the Harshini it was a celebration of life; simply another way to express their joy for living. Harshini did not marry and the concept of jealousy was unknown to them. They shared their bodies and their irresistible, magical gift with no thought to the consequences, or any real understanding of the importance humans attached to it. Among them, it was never a problem. For the Harshini there was no need to explain and nothing to justify.

But when they shared that gift with humans, things got complicated. He had told R'shiel that life had been peaceful and happy before the Sisters of the Blade, but it was jealousy of that peace and happiness that had given rise to the Sisterhood. Their whole sick cult had grown out of the fear of a handful of human women afraid they