Her words were daggers of frost and flame. I had no choice but to stand.
"I came not to turn back. My soul and body belong to this moment. I am ready."
Iftar inclined her head. The ground convulsed. A scorching gale wrapped me; a whirlwind of fire roared. Skin seemed to flay, limbs to rend, yet I stood rooted as if the sun's blaze did not burn but purified. Within I cried out, recalling my father's voice: The fire cannot consume one who carries the sun's blaze in her blood.
When the flames at last receded, I stood in an ancient battlefield. I wore a gleaming golden cuirass and held a sword forged of sunlight. Before me rose numberless spectral warriors, eyes flickering like tongues of fire. Their captain thundered,
"Pretender queen if you are truly chosen of the sun, show us, or face annihilation."
They charged in a single deluge. Memories burst within me ancient forebears, my father testing my courage with a drawn blade when I was a child. My arms bore the strength of forgotten kings. I fought without mercy; each stroke rang with a cry of triumph or despair. A savage power I had never known surged through me. They fell in waves yet I sensed the real trial was not of the sword alone.
The battlefield vanished. I stood in a dark, still chamber before a riddle of dizzying complexity. Rock walls bore old symbols that glowed and faded as though breathing. Each glyph carried a shard of buried memory: distant scenes, a lonely child's laughter, featureless faces. Chill crept over me; madness hovered. Drawing my last store of will, I confronted the symbols and shouted:
"The sun never sets, for its light dwells within us. Truth is no single, and time is but a veil the mind lowers to shield itself from chaos."
The symbols burst with a thunderous clangor, proclaiming my triumph in that trial of mind, yet I grasped then that the final ordeal was the darkest and most demanding of all. I found myself before a bottomless abyss, black and soundless, spanned by a bridge of crystalline glass so frail it seemed a glance alone would fissure it. Iftar's voice rang out, as pitiless as a headsman pronouncing sentence.
"This is the assay of faith faith in yourself and in your people. Here you will stand as queen, or fall into oblivion. Dare your cross, Daughter of the Sun?"
For a heartbeat dread seeped into my marrow; loneliness and pain coiled round me once more. Yet I heard the voices of my people and felt the burden of Sheba's hopes, and my father's last words echoed in my ear: You are the hope and the sun of this land; do not turn back.
I stepped forward on trembling feet. The glass beneath me quivered toward ruin; each stride stretched into eternity. In my skull clamored the whispers of those who claimed I was unfit to rule. Iftar's voice cleft the fog:
"You are the inheritance, the deathless light, the true sovereign."
I drove my feet down with all my strength and crossed in unbroken resolve until I reached the farther edge. I breathed deep and knew I had passed the utmost test. From the shadows Iftar returned, a cryptic smile upon her lips, and held out the Solar Charter gleaming with unearthly luster. Before she surrendered it, she approached and murmured a sacred canticle, her fingers tracing upon my back the sigil of the sun. The pain was searing, yet with it a colossal force pierced my soul.
She went to my ear, her whisper steeped in majesty and warning.
"You have shown a fearsome resolve befitting the Sun's own child, and now you bear its blessing. Yet know the road before you is darker than you imagine."
I clasped the charter and felt a vast power surge through my limbs. I was no longer the woman who had entered; now I understood I was Balqis, the chosen daughter of the Sun, undying queen of Sheba. This ordeal was only the threshold of a new age of strength and trial.
Iftar gestured to the scroll.
"This is the Absolute Solar Charter. Only a handful of Sun blooded monarchs have broken its seal. It holds a long-forgotten principle: the inheritance of the sun is single it distinguishes neither man nor woman, for light stands above the flesh."
My heart beat like wings. Could this sacred text truly redeem what I suffer in the capital the struggle against those who reject me because I am a woman? I unfolded it and read the holy glyphs unveiling wonders: the children of the Sun know no gender upon the throne. Inscribed within, the charter declared that sovereignty is neither male nor female but belongs to any who carry that royal blood tethered to the great Sun. A rush of inward victory rose, mingled with dread of a power capable of overturning ancient verdicts.
"With this charter, Balqis," Iftar proclaimed, "none may challenge your right neither the high priest of the capital nor any tribal sheikh who brandishes the myths of the forefathers. This covenant is elder than your epoch, and whoever denies a sun that shines solely for its offspring is an apostate to its light." Yet I caught in her tone a quiet sorrow, a reminder that supreme power is not free of hidden curses.
Bowing, as though before some hallowed secret, I asked the question that gnawed at me.
"What is this other blood you say I bear? And how did you know of al Haddad's death before I spoke it?"
She shook her head, her answer muttered like prophecy.
"Within you stirs a trace of blood unknown; wait, and the veils will part. As for the king's passing when any Sun blooded breathes his last, these gates tremble; his sigh is etched upon the tablets here before mortal tidings can reach men."
I understood that possession of this charter did not close my trial but opened a path strewn with new perils. My foes in the capital would fear me more keenly now and might sharpen their conspiracies, yet I would not relent. Armed with this revelation, I could disarm every argument of a woman's frailty.
I swallowed hard, feeling a strange pulse resound within me my spirit glowed with added light. I bowed to Iftar and asked,
"How shall I return? My guards lie outside the gate, and the desert rebelled against me before guiding me here. I am not certain I can find the way again."
She answered with a veiled smile.
"None who come to Aww am depart unchanged. Your inner sun will guide you. Go, Daughter of the Sun; time itself reshapes beneath your resolve. Should the path stray, look within your breast then the cosmos will answer."
I closed my eyes; a sudden radiance whirled through the hall like a white storm. When I opened them I stood once more before the Gate of Heaven, out upon the barren earth. My five guards lay where they had fallen, as though in deep slumber; life still coursed in them, and they stirred awake one by one, bewilderment clouding their faces. They asked what had transpired; they recalled only the moment they collapsed.
I wrapped the charter carefully in my cloak, feeling a gentle warmth pulse from its heart. I felt it as one feels a new soul. Lifting my gaze to the flawless sky, I remembered the wars to come tribal sheikhs, the high priest, Hamdan ibn Riyan, the enemies who see in me only a woman to shackle or remove. Now, the charter rests in my grasp.
"Let us return to Sheba for the sun awaits a new covenant from my hand."
My voice, at last ringed with command, drifted across the dunes. For the first time since we slipped from the capital's gates, the road stretched before us unmarred by doubt. Perils would surely stalk our way home, yet I bore a weapon no malice could pierce: a truth wrought in an age that knew no divide between man and woman.
We pressed on through the desert. The small light that had guided me within the temple had become a radiance burning from my own depths; every grain of sand crushed beneath my stride reminded me I had ventured beyond mortal bounds. Now I must embrace my fate as a true Daughter of the Sun.
When the first outlines of the pass leading to the capital surfaced upon the horizon, I steeled myself for what must come. I would confront the high priest in the Temple of the Sun, raise the charter before the council of sheikhs, and silence every tongue that scorns a woman's rule. A merciless struggle would follow, and darker chapters might yet be written in Sheba's chronicle but I would illumine the path with this absolute sun. Either its blaze would burn the conspiracies to ash, or it would kindle a firestorm that sweeps the kingdom entire.