Noran Daharshi

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Home	The Avonbourn, formerly Varaar
Family	The Daharshi family, killed by the Rewakan gang
Status	Deceased
First appearance	A Sacred Tale Collection

Noran Daharshi is the woman Aero Ellisvat has loved since he was eight years old, and the reason he goes back into Rewakan territory on the night The Heart of the Kella takes place.^[1] The gang killed her family and left her alive with every bone in her body broken and her eyes gone, and she spent her last five moons blind and bedridden in an upstairs room at The Avonbourn.^[1] She died there with the Heart of the Kella fastened round her neck, having first made Aero promise to leave his old life behind.^[1]

Appearance

Aero cannot connect the woman in front of him with the one he remembers, and the story sets the two side by side. She had been a young beauty who danced till the sun rose, never once pausing for breath, or letting his hand leave hers, with skin a beautiful light-brown hue and long, sleek hair.^[1]

By the time of the story she is, in the story's words, "little more than bones and tired flesh spilled across a dusty mattress".^[1] Her skin is a patchwork of purple and red scars. Her hair is thinned down to the skull and falls in wisps of brown across her face. She is blind, with two black holes where her eyes had been, and several of her teeth are missing.^[1] Her voice comes out as a weak peep, almost too soft to hear, and she croaks when she speaks at length.^[1]

Every bone in her body has been broken. Moving at all takes every ounce of energy she has, and the pain of it shows on her face.^[1] She is too weak to drink on her own, and the water cup on her nightstand sits full.^[1]

Personality

Noran does not soften anything for anyone. Asked lightly where she would be without Aero, her one-word answer was that she would be dead. Told that the gods work in strange ways, she came back with "Strange, you say? I say cruel." Her own question to him was "why have the gods made me suffer so?"^[1]

She is still capable of teasing him, and he treats it as proof that she is herself. She asked him to lean in so that she could feel his hair, told him he had not cut it, and told him he tries too hard to please her.^[1]

Her last thoughts on the page are for him rather than for herself. She told him to move on and find a woman who could be there for him, and she made the only thing she asked in return a condition on his safety.^[1]

She also refused what her family was. Aero's account of her, thrown at the man who ordered the killing, is that she was their only daughter and "wanted nothing to do with her family's crimes".^[1]

Background

Noran was the only daughter of the Daharshi family of Varaar. What the family did is never spelled out beyond Aero's word for it, crimes, and the Rewakan gang leader Jensaad's defence of the killing, which was that they were a threat and that the rule is to leave no witnesses.^[1]

She met Aero as a child. She had come out with her father to run errands because she was sick of being trapped in her house, and the two of them locked eyes in the market square. She crossed to his family's booth and asked about the necklaces they peddled, and he gave her the most expensive item in the shop, the necklace called the Heart of the Kella. His own father beat him through the night for it. Noran remembers none of this herself and knows it only through his retelling.^[1]

The gang came for the family and nearly wiped them out entirely. Noran was the one they left, in Aero's words, barely breathing, and the necklace went to Jensaad, who was wearing it in bed when Aero came back for it moons later.^[1]

Aero moved her to the Avonbourn five moons before the story opens, judging the tavern safer for her than his own house in Varaar. Reslyn Keiser kept her in the last room on the right of the second floor and kept her whereabouts quiet.^[1] Nobody there watered the plants on her windowsill, and by the end they were dead: "They don't care for such things here," she told Aero.^[1]

She could not write on her own and needed assistance with virtually everything, so her letters were written for her and were rarely good news. The one before her last had announced that her legs finally gave out, restricting her to her bed.^[1]

Story

The Heart of the Kella

Aero's pet bird-cat Mawris drops a letter down his chimney at his house in Varaar, embossed with a swooping A, the symbol of the Avonbourn. It runs to a single line: "It is time. Yours truly, Noran Daharshi." He reads it as her saying she is ready to give in to her suffering, abandons the plan he had made to steal the Heart of the Kella back on their anniversary two moons later, and goes that night instead.^[1]

He reaches the Avonbourn late that night with a knife wound in his shoulder and the necklace in his satchel. Reslyn will not tell him how Noran is and sends him up to see for himself. He raps twice on her door, lightly, because sudden noises can set off the wrong memories, and she answers in a peep.^[1]

He lights the oil lamp although she cannot see it, pours her water into the vase of dead plants, and sits with her. She raises the letter herself. He begs her never to write such foolish things again, and she ignores him and asks to feel him instead, reaching up to coil a lock of his hair round her finger and telling him he has not cut it. Then she says it plainly: she does not want to suffer any more, and Reslyn has already prepared the pytocane. The vial is on the nightstand, and Aero cannot keep his eyes off the dark-green liquid in it. She tells him to move on and find a woman who can be there for him.^[1]

Aero changes the subject by telling her about the day they met, in detail, down to the beating he took for the necklace. She smiles for the first time, which he had been waiting for all day, and says "Your memory, how does it stay so vivid?" He asks her to lean forward, fastens the Heart of the Kella behind her neck and lets it fall to the middle of her chest. She twists the largest stone between her fingers and asks how he found it, since it was stolen moons ago, and he tells her only that she is his queen.^[1]

She thanks him "For everything you have done for me." He uncorks the vial and holds it to her lips, and she drinks it down. Her one request as the pytocane takes hold is "Leave it all behind." She wants him to start a new life for himself, one that will not get him killed in his sleep, because she refuses to die knowing that he is not safe. He gives her his word, laces his fingers into hers and holds her hand until it falls limp.^[1]

Aero pulls the covers over her, tucks them beneath her, kisses her forehead and moves a stray strand of hair out of her face before he goes.^[1] On his way out of the tavern he lays the Viper on the bar and tells Reslyn the weapon no longer belongs to him.^[1]

Sacred: Eslura's Calling

Noran does not appear in either novel, but she is spoken of in one. On the night Aero brings Reagan Hideaway and Tab to the Avonbourn, Reagan asks Tab who the woman was that Aero had come there to see. Tab's answer is that she was "the woman who stole Aero's heart".^[2]

Relationships

Aero Ellisvat has loved her since he was eight years old and calls her his queen. He kept her hidden at the Avonbourn, had last visited a moon before the story opens, went back into the Rewakan compound and killed his old mentor to put her necklace back on her, and gave up the life he had lived and the sword he had lived it with because she asked him to.^[1]

Reslyn Keiser housed her for her last five moons, kept quiet about who was in the upstairs room, and prepared the pytocane she drank. Asked how Noran was, Reslyn would not answer and sent Aero up the stairs instead, and her manner afterwards had dropped to short answers spat through gritted teeth.^[1]

Jensaad led the Rewakan gang, had been Aero's mentor when Aero was a teenager, and ordered the killing of her family. He has no article. He wore the Heart of the Kella himself, and when Aero named her to him and asked what kind of threat Noran had been, his answer was "Leave no witnesses, Aero."^[1]

Behind the scenes

The cast list at the front of A Sacred Tale Collection gives the name in full as Noran Daharshi, Nor-ann Duh-haar-she. The pronunciation guides at the back of both novels carry only the given name, as Nor-ann.^[3]^[4]^[5]

The advertisement for the Collection printed in the back of both novels tells the story from Aero's side, saying only that "the woman who holds his heart after all these years is on her deathbed", and naming neither the injuries nor who caused them.^[4]^[5]

M.C. Beeler's afterword to the Collection names Noran among the characters who have been with her for a while.^[3]