[Amanaduial the archer]

"High Priestess?" A muffled voice preceding another knock on the door broke the quiet inside Zamara’s quarters. When there was no reply, the door was edged carefully open and Tayfar’s covered head appeared around the side. She looked around the room quickly, then, a look of puzzlement on her round features, she advanced tentatively into the room.

“High Priestess Zamara…?” She repeated, looking through the open doorways almost guiltily as she took a few more steps forward into the centre of the room. She had never been inside Zamara’s rooms alone before – and it seemed she was entirely alone, for the Priestess was nowhere to be seen. Compared with the palace rooms or rooms of others high in state, Zamara’s rooms were surprisingly sparse, for practical reasons mainly: they were quite open, the rooms separated with beaded curtains rather than doors, and the whole of one side was dominated by wide, unpaned windows stretching from ceiling to almost floor-level. The Pashtians, living in the desert, were fine craftsmen of glass, but the priestess contented herself with veils of thin, dark-cream cloth instead. It provided more shade from the heat, rather than magnifying it as the sun would and besides, no one would dare to use the open windows as a means of unlawfully entering the chambers of the High Priestess of the most favoured deity, Rhais. The veils were each embroidered with the tree design of the goddess, and there were five on one side of the room – the side that should, the girl thought, be facing towards the desert – each about half a metre apart. On wall opposite the windows, snaking stetches in some sort of dark red mud – meandering, twisting patterns, both smooth and jagged, although of what it was hard to say unless you were either very close or far away. Tayfar half closed her wide brown eyes and squinted at the patterns, trying to look at everything together in unity as the priestesses had taught her, and, after a second or two, she realised the whole image: a forest, stylised trees melding into each other, each set in the centre with a large knot hole, out of which red sap was flowing – the ruby red of Zamara’s medallion. Tayfar’s eyes opened wide again as she smiled childishly in simple delight at the revelation, and she darted forward to the wall, her fingers outstretched towards the ruby red of the sap – so bright from afar. But as she did so, she found the picture was in fact far more complex than it had seemed at first, every leaf seeming to be picked out, but from so close it was strangely flat and two dimensional. Tayfar’s fingers traced the pattern of one ‘branch’ of leaves, until a breeze wafted through the room and she spun around guiltily, expecting to see Zamara watching her.

But the cool room remained empty. Directly in front of the door Tayfar had entered by, adjacent to the wall of windows and the forest-wall, was a larger opening, but the entrance of this was draped with an airier, veil-like covering, and beyond it she could see the ghostly outline of a balcony rail; but despite the bright sunlight of the late afternoon coming from the West, the younger trainee acolyte could not see a silhouette through the veil. Hearing the sound of running water, she moved towards the bathroom like a moth drawn to the light, rather than floundering in the other woman’s rooms – but on the way there, she felt drawn by that larger window. Glancing furtively towards the doorway where the sounds of water came from, she drifted towards the window guiltily, reaching out with a trembling hand to pull the veil aside.

The brisk clattering of the beaded curtain made Tayfar jump like a startled desert rabbit, her hand shooting down to her side in an instant as she spun around. Zamara stood in the doorway of the beaded curtains, a new white robe hanging untied at the waist from her slim frame and her hair flowing loose over her shoulders, but her hands hidden from sight behind the curtains. The priestess relaxed when she saw Tayfar, and to the girl’s relief, she did not seem angry: she moved back into the other room and the sound of the water stopped, it’s silence accompanied by the sound of a metallic object being put down – Tayfar, in her curiousness, couldn’t help wondering what it was. Then Zamara emerged once more and Tayfar nodded her head deeply to her in respect.

“Priestess, are you ready for me to prepare you for the banquet?” she asked formally. Zamara didn’t seem to hear immediately, an indulgent smile on her angular features. Her dark eyes flickered past Tayfar to the window then back to the acolyte once more, and Tayfar blushed, caught out. “I-I didn’t mean any harm in touching the veil,” she stammered uncertainly. She had always been told never to go into the private quarters surrounding the temple and never, ever to touch what was inside without permission, qualification or a holy purpose – none of which, obviously, Tayfar had. She had been at the temple for a few months now, and in that time still felt as lost as ever with the mysterious High Priestess. My family will disown me if I am rejected from the temple… “I was just looking b-because…”

Zamara walked briskly towards her, but passed by without reprimanding her, sweeping the gauzy curtain aside in a swift motion to reveal a sight outside that took Tayfar’s breath away.

“If this is why, then you are more than forgiven.” Zamara’s voice was amused.

The fiery fingers of the sun were reaching towards the tips of the mountains in the distance, making them shimmer with heat as it’s rays turned fiery red and danced behind them, a golden-orange haze settling over the sandy horizon. Zamara drew up a chair as Tayfar stared in wonder: she had not looked at the sunset over the desert for years, and had never really thought about it, but this wide, arched window afforded an amazing view. Snapping back to her senses, Tayfar took the chair from Zamara with an apology and took the liberty of placing it on the balcony, so that Zamara would face the sunset as Tayfar prepared her. Opening the dull brown satchel that hung across her chest, the acolyte took out a snap-up table and, after setting it up, took out a plain wooden box and placed it on top. Unshouldering the bag, she took out a comb and softbrush and began to work her way through Zamara’s thick, surprisingly wavy, dark hair. She worked in silence and with gentle efficiency.

“It is beautiful, is it not?” Zamara broke the silence after some time, and Tayfar looked up, still slightly jittery, then continued with her work, opening the box and taking out several long, thin strips of stiff golden cloth. As she began to wind them into Zamara’s hair, the priestess continued. “It is the most wonderful fusing of the two gods: both Rhais and Rae are in that spectacle. It is not just the sky god who makes himself known in the sunset, although of course he reigns over it: the mother goddess reflects and compliments his work underneath there, allowing her beauty to work with his as the sun sinks behind the desert, to form such a vision.” Zamara sighed softly.

“And so the sun sets in the West.”

Zamara picked up on the stress Tayfar put in the last word. The smooth skin of her brow crinkled slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing.” The acolyte’s fingers worked easily as she twisted the curls of hair around the strips of gold. “It…it just seems appropriate, that’s all.”

Zamara did not reply. Tayfar continued and after Zamara prompted her a little, she began to chatter, her words flowing more easily as time passed and she moved onto doing the priestess’ hands and makeup. She talked about her father and his vibrant stories from the army as she painted back on the henna patterns (already stained lightly as a fine red lattice on Zamara’s dark skin from being re-applied so often) across the priestess’ palms and the backs of her hands…

…fondly talking about her mother, how she had worked hard to bring up Tayfar as well as her two twin brothers, Cadeffen and Tadek, identical to all but Tayfar and her parents, as she rubbed the kohl powder into a fine paste and applied it carefully to the pale insides of Zamara’s eyelids, along the line of the eyelashes, and noting to herself as she did so the strange dark sapphire tinge that the irises had;

…and as she applied the fine lines of white kohl to accentuate her cheekbones and following the line of her nose up between her eyes to a tiny diamond of white dots in the centre of Zamara’s forehead, Tayfar spoke also of her mother’s death several months ago after Tadek and Cadeffen left for the military as well, how she had said her family was ‘disappearing in front of her eyes’ – Zamara didn’t speak: she herself had lost one parent at an early age, but the priestesses of Rhais taught that everything happens for a reason: if Tayfar’s mother had not died and the rest of her army been in the army, she would never have been entrusted to the temple of Rhais.

And as she tied at the side the golden cord wrapped around Zamara’s waist and slid the golden upper arm bracelet, the golden wrist bands and neck band, she finished off with talk of the temple and the priestesses themselves. She added the finishing touches to Zamara’s makeup, darkening her eyelids, touching up the diamond of white dots, stark against Zamara’s dark skin, and stood back. The High Priestess opened her eyes and, after talking to Tayfar further for a few minutes, she dismissed the girl with her thanks. Only when she heard the door close behind the younger girl did the priestess actually look out towards the sunset once more.

The sky god’s greatest wonder was now half-submerged behind the mountains of sand in the distance, and great, smouldering rays reached still into the sky and stroked Rhais’ work tenderly. Zamara smiled, then it faded slightly as she thought more deeply about what Tayfar had unwittingly said. ‘It sets in the West…seems appropriate, that’s all.’

“I do not think that is all…” Zamara murmured, rising from the chair to stand in front of the balcony rail, looking out across the awesome stretch of the desert in front of her. The sun sets in the West…it comes to it’s final resting place there…the work of our gods dies in the West. She blinked, startled by the thought, and her jaw tightened. What sort of premonition could that be? A foreshadow of what was to come. The Westerners did not even recognise Rhais and Rae. Did not even pay heed to the gods she had dedicated her life to…

“I dine tonight with these Westerners, O Goddess,” she whispered to the sand dunes. “I will find out what they mean towards you and your brother Rae.”