“I don’t think it is misdirected,” I said, sitting up. “I think your soul is right on the mark. It’s the rest of the Chosen race that’s errant.”

“So half the world is wrong, Elsha?”

“Yes, it is.”

He sat up, laughing softly. “Sweet heresies!” he said, and reached for the cloth-wrapped parcel of our meal. He spread it out in front of him. There was a wineskin, too, which he uncorked. He drank deeply, and gave me a scarlet-lipped smile. “I’ll miss this good wine, when our high lord goes. They’ll put it away until the next important guest arrives, and we’ll suffer vinegar again. Do you realise this is our farewell feast, Elsha, since tomorrow you will go?”

“I know it,” I said, and waited for him to offer me the wine. He recorked it, and set it down carefully on the ground. He began to eat, hungrily.

This was the third meal we had eaten, just the two of us, out here. Maybe I was crazed to think it, but I had almost hoped that he would let me eat with him. Not afterwards, when he had finished, as tradition dictated – but with him, at the same time. I could have reached out, could have helped myself to a portion of bread and a piece of cheese; but it would have meant more if he had offered it. It would have meant everything.

And it was then, watching him eat before me, that I realised there was inconsistency in him. He said there was no difference between Chosen and Quelled; he said men were not more sacred than women, nor women less than men; he said we were side by side, matched in every way. He said all these things – but his life spoke differently. He still ate before me, first, as my lord. And in that simple act, he undid all his words.

I said goodbye to him early the next morning. He told me that his father was sending him to the army in the northern territories, to knock his mad ideas into shape. I told him of Amasai, and asked him to salute that man for me. And I thought to myself that Amasai was not the man for mending mad ideas. Alejandro kissed my cheek and held me close, and said he’d mss me like a kindred soul.

A short time later my lord and I were on a high, windy road, our faces set towards the sacred mountain, the site of the great Fire Festival. That mountain I had seen in dreams, and now I knew its name. It was Kasimarra.

But on the way we visited another place – a hidden, nameless place, about which the Firelord swore me to secrecy. And that place, concealed deep within a circle of mountains and reached only by a secret pass, became for me the most beloved place on earth.

13 The Light in My Dark

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