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The child Anghara Kir Hama was forced to flee the kingdom she rightfully ruled, escaping the murderous wrath of her brother, the usurper, who would see her dead to secure the throne. But her years spent in a strange desert land — honing the miraculous power called Sight — have forever changed the young queen. And now it is time to claim what is hers.

But treachery greets Anghara upon her return to a realm suffering under the cruelty of the bloodthirsty tyrant Sif. In the dungeons of her enemy, she awaits an inevitable death, robbed of the gift that set her apart from all others. Yet those who have sworn to defend her will not rest until their cherished queen is safe, including one whose noble heart belongs to her alone. For young Anghara's remarkable destiny is greater than crowns and countries — greater even than the fearsome Old Gods who must stand down to make way for the Changer of Days.

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Changer of Days

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

It was raining in Roisinan.

The Kheldrini ship glided into the harbor of Calabra at twilight, with the first torches already guttering under sheltering roofs streaming with water. The air was rich, damp, cool, filled with the sharp, brittle smell of autumn which opened the floodgates of memory and released a torrent of small, exquisitely painful recollections into Anghara's mind. As she had found it difficult to believe that anything other than the yellow sand of Arad Khajir'i'id lay beyond the mountains that sundered the desert from the sea, so now she found it equally hard to think that there was anything else in the world except this wet autumn evening on the shores of Roisinan. There was a lump in her throat which she couldn't quite seem to swallow as she stepped off the ship, dressed decorously Roisinan-fashion and wrapped in what had once been Kieran's cloak, the same one she had taken from Cascin and treasured carefully throughout her years in Bresse and the Twilight Country -- her Kheldrini finery she carried bundled up in a parcel in her hand. Home. She was home. Everything about this place she knew, she remembered, it was all stamped soul-deep into her; she forgot for the moment, lost in the sheer joy of it, why she had fled Roisinan, and the cage she had once seen hanging in a street of this very town.

She stood motionless for an instant, lifting her face into the drizzling rain much as Kieran had been wont to do back in Cascin, and for the same reason -- in the past two years Anghara had not seen water often, rain least of all. The few violent desert storms that had come her way had been a far cry from what she revelled in now -- and she had all but forgotten the feel of raindrops on her skin. Her eyes were closed in a kind of rapture, and her face, if she had only stopped to think about it, was full in the light of a nearby torch, underneath a half-drawn hood that offered little concealment. A man standing a few paces away, talking to the captain of another ship which had come into harbor almost at the same time as Anghara's and had berthed alongside, glanced casually at the passenger who had just come off the Kheldrini vessel, and then looked again, narrowing his eyes in sudden interest. Before Anghara had opened her eyes and moved away from the quayside, the man had abruptly excused himself from his friend and stood waiting in the shadows. When Anghara walked away from her ship and into Calabra to look for food and shelter, he followed her at a judicious distance.

She did not choose the hostelry where ai'Jihaar had taken her on her last sojourn in this place. That held too many memories, even for her; and it was a place where the Kheldrini traders often stayed when in Roisinan. Anghara wanted to reconnect to Roisinan, not wallow in memories of Kheldrin; she picked a sturdy Roisinani inn just off the quay. She even had plans of joining the common room crowd for a while, listening to the sound of her own tongue, not heard since she left Calabra two years before -- if one didn't count ai'Jihaar in the beginning, or al'Jezraal's own surprising, Shaymir-gleaned prowess. But once the landlord's buxom wife showed her into her room, the lure of the narrow bed proved too strong. Anghara hadn't realized how tired she was, how much emotion could drain one's strength, and she had been living on little else but emotion, culminating with tonight, ever since she had sailed from Sa'alah. There would be time -- there would be time for everything. For now, a jaw-cracking yawn reminded her that the best thing to start with would be a good night's sleep; she yielded with good grace, leaving the common room for another time.

Her dreams were strange, laced with odd premonitions of which she could only recall the sense but not the substance when she woke the following morning. She brooded on them for as long as it took her to dress and get ready to step outside and begin reclaiming Roisinan, only to dismiss them as she closed the door of her room behind her. A pale sun was shining from a washed-out sky, the air crisp and cool from last night's rain; the day was full of promise. Anghara breathed deeply of it, touching again the edges of last night's joy, tasting it as though it was sweet wine -- and then, gray eyes determined, she set her mind sternly on what lay ahead.

The first order of business was the purchase of a horse. Anghara spared a swift, regretful thought for the gray dun she had ridden into Sa'alah -- his owner, the yellow-eyed young man from Kharg'in'dun'an, had said that nothing she would ever ride afterward would match that mount. She set out in the direction where, according to the landlord, lay a posting stables which might offer a far more ordinary beast for sale.

She had left her premonitions behind in her room, but on this bright, innocent morning she could not get rid of a prickling between her shoulder blades. Several times she turned sharply, but never saw anything untoward behind her, and hated herself for waking this suspicion so soon.

What if someone recognized her?

Fool, she chided herself, after yet another glance behind. The years in Kheldrin, and before that the years in Bresse . . . Who is likely to recognize you after all this time?

But the feeling persisted. Perhaps because of it, she was far too eager to conclude the deal for the horse -- to be out of this place, with its invisible eyes. The stable owner sensed her urgency, and got away with far more than he would if Anghara's full attention had been on the bargaining. Nevertheless, she walked out of the stables as the owner of a quiet bay mare; the mare had cast a shoe the previous day, however, and it was agreed she would be delivered to Anghara's inn after she'd received the required attention from the smith.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Changer of Days by Alma Alexander Copyright © 2005 by Alma Alexander. Excerpted by permission.
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