The girl looked out over the distance, her dark hair with sun bronzed streaks flailing behind her in the wind. This is where her teacher and long time friend, the Shang Pheonix, had told her to go. To Tortall.
She'd been a full fledged Shang for a year now, though herself without a Shang name. She went by none other then Arra. I've put off coming Tortall for a year. Because I was too afraid what I'd find, but I'm hurting people now and this is where I've been directed.
Arra sighed and urged her horse, Ghost, forward. She tried to stay away from the memory of why she didn't have her Shang name, too many complicated things. It had cost her too many things. Arra was still a ways from Tortall though she could see it, which left her time to think about what she was really doing here.
I'm just going to a mage school is all. They told me powerful mages live here who can help me. And to save myself some trouble I'll keep hidden the fact that I'm a Shang. Not only that but the Nameless Shang.
Yet another thing all this had brought her. Apparently, she'd made a name for herself in the past year. Ironic how she'd made the name without a name. They called her the Nameless Shang. Arra had met many kings and even the Emperor of Carthak just by saying she was the Nameless Shang. She hadn't meant it, well meant for it to win her an audience. She was just passing through and happened to say she was a Shang, the Nameless Shang.
I never wanted any of it. All I wanted, even from the very beginning, was to be free to make my own choices. That's it. Life is never easy, that's what her teacher had always said, a sort of motto if you will.
Tortall, Tortall, her mind whirred with the city's name. Had her own name preceded her here too? She hoped not. One of the things people always wanted to now was why she was Nameless. Her most famous answer was, "The Shang Council found me unfit."
People would answer with. "But you still carry the name 'Shang' with you.
"I was fit enough to carry the title with me, but I carried no honor for a Shang name."
So the conversation usually went.
Of course she knew the reason, well that was the reason but not the full story. Her own teacher had not even stood up for her in the Council. She remembered his brown eyes apologizing to her, telling her this was how it had to be even if it was wronging her in some way. Arra had understood. He couldn't have done anything else and still be considered an honorable Shang.
The one person who had stood by her was her friend, who had also been trained by the Pheonix. He had almost given up his own naming for it though. As of now he carried the name Shang Hawk.
"The problem with me was I had the Gift." The lone girl murmured to herself. One white ear flicked back at her, questioning what she had said. Arra answered, "Don't worry about it, Ghost." And petted the mare's side.
Though having the Gift wasn't all of it.
As they neared the city Arra started to wander deeper into her thoughts when something struck her shoulder, piercing it with searing pain. She studied it through the pain and found an arrow protruding form her shoulder.
A poisoned arrow.