Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Our two ships skim the dunes, the morning chilly and bright. I man the wheel of the The Crying Gull, my eyes aching from the lack of sleep over the long, cold night. Kaliil stands near the bowsprit, scanning the horizon with his looking glass. I ask Rafaf to relieve me.

  As I reach Kaliil’s side, a long harroon breaks over the dunes from the southeast. My grip stiffens painfully on the gunwale’s railing. My hands refuse to release, for the sound is so near. I thought the ehrekh had lost our scent, that it had been mere bad luck that had placed us within its reach, within its hatred for mankind.

  I scan the dunes over and over, but with the sun angled so low, I can discern little among the shadows.

  From the west comes another harroon, with the same rattling aspect to it. I trade fearful glances with Kaliil as the other men eye us. I want to provide strength for those watching, want to hide my fear, but I find I have lost all courage with the realization that there are now two of them chasing us.

  “Do you still deny there is spice aboard?” I ask.

  Before he can respond, Wahid whistles down from the vulture’s nest. “Oasis!”

  A large caravanserai comes into view as we glide beyond an escarpment of black rock. Dozens of men, each armed with a bow or crossbow, stand along the wall. The gate opens and out ride three men. Two of them ride further back than the lead, and each bears a bow, arrow nocked.

  Their leader—an old man with a black turban with a single gold medallion at the brow—raises his hands as our ships slow to a halt. “Do not think to trouble us, Kaliil. Move on, and take the anger of the desert with you.”

  Kaliil’s face turns red. “The desert be damned, Aegi! How many times have I sprinkled gold in your taverns? How much silver have my men lost gambling at your tables?”

  “None of that matters when the desert itself seeks to spit you out.”

  “Then at least let us provision. We’re short of water. Surely you must realize Sytaatha was exaggerating.”

  Aegi flicks his hand toward our ship. The two riders behind him pull back their bows and loose one arrow apiece. I yank Kaliil back from the edge instinctively, but the arrows bite into the wood of the hull well below the gunwale’s railing.

  “Best put on sail, Kaliil. I hear the ehrekh move with devilish speed.” And with that Aegi returns to the protection of his caravanserai.

  Kaliil fumes. I think if he had enough men he would order us to throw ourselves against them.

  We return to our desert trek, and Kaliil calls me into his cabin. He sits in his large padded chair, watching the horizon through the opened shutters set into the rear of the cabin.

  “Two of them, Muulthasa,” he says, rubbing away at his golden wishing coin.

  I say nothing in return, and he eventually turns his sober eyes on me.

  “You’re from Harrahd,” he says.

  I nod to him carefully. We have never discussed my origin. I have grown accustomed to hiding the fact, but it is easy enough to discern my northern accent.

  “King Sulamin, his control over the ehrekh... Is there no way for them to lose the scent?”

  I shrug. “I know little enough about him, and less about the ehrekh. I’ve heard as many rumors as you. They hunt what they’re bidden to hunt and do not rest until they have it.”

  Kaliil frowns and returns to his vigil over the dunes. “Why didn’t they attack together that first time?”

  An interesting question. “Perhaps they weren’t sure where we would be. Perhaps one was positioned along the eastern trail, the other along the west.”

  As his fingers continue to rub, the golden coin slips in and out of view. “Can the ehrekh smell fyndrenna hidden deep in a ship’s hold?”

  The words settle over me like the cold winter winds of the north. I close my eyes, angry for ever believing he had none aboard. The way he throws his betrayal about, like it means nothing to him, enrages me. I take a deep breath and release my question slowly. “How much do you have?”

  “Two more cases.”

  “By the gods, Kaliil! Sulamin would kill you over one. For three they’ll kill us all!”

  Kaliil slams his fist onto his desk. “Can they smell it, Muulthasa? Will they stop chasing us if we rid ourselves of it?”

  The ehrekh’s bellow plays across the desert behind us. So loud is the noise, it can be no more than a mile away now.

  “We had better hope so,” I tell him as I head for the cabin door. “Bring them on deck.”

  I return to the foredeck, where the woman watches the horizon intently. Her veil whips in the hot wind, revealing only her painted lashes, her bright green eyes. She is so familiar. If only I could see her face unobstructed...

  “Best you get belowdecks,” I say.

  She casts her gaze downward and heads for the hatch.

  Before she can take two steps, the ehrekh’s call echoes, close. It is different this time, higher-pitched.

  “Hard to starboard, Rafaf! Now!”

  Rafaf pulls the ship hard over. Ahead, an explosion of sand bursts into the warming desert sky. An ehrekh howls. The force of his breath shoves us to one side, and the ship groans as it lists far to starboard. Our scout falls screaming from the vulture’s nest and flies wide of the tilted ship. His screams stop with an abrupt thud.

  Rafaf is forced to compensate for the lean by pulling larboard. The ehrekh lunges and catches the stern railing, which shatters free in a six-foot section as the ship continues on.

  The men bring their crossbows to bear and let fly, but the beast waves its hand, sending up a hissing wall of red sand to foul the quarrels’ paths. By the time the sand plummets back to the dunes, the ehrekh has vanished.

  Kaliil grapples his way along the gunwale, wary of the concealing sands below our skis, and hands me an ornate inlaid box. The scent of aged bonewood and pepper cannot hide the overpowering smell. It burns, like strong rum, but there is a sweetness to it and an underscent of rosemary or angelica.

  “One?” I stare at him, incredulous. “You brought only one?”

  “Throw it to the sand when it comes. If it follows the box, then it must be after the fyndrenna. If not...”

  No sooner do the words escape his mouth than the ship bucks, sending me through the air. Kaliil falls and slips backward along the deck. The ship is tilted strangely, and a moment later I see why: the second ehrekh has grabbed onto the stern deck. One of its black hands reaches high and hooks a fistful of rigging to pull itself higher. The other, gods save us, is lodged through the hull.

  The rear of the ship drops and scrapes against the sand. Kaliil loses his hold and slips further along the slick deck toward the ehrekh. It bares its yellow teeth and releases a pleased, chill-inducing growl.

  Unable to think of anything else, I throw the case of fyndrenna at the ehrekh. It roars as the case bursts and the golden spice within sprays it in the face. The beast snatches Kaliil’s leg. Rafaf abandons the wheel in favor of a crossbow and releases a quarrel deep into the ehrekh’s shoulder. It mewls and throws Kaliil high into the air behind it. He flies silently, limbs flailing. His black turban flutters free of his head, and his golden coin glints as it spins away and lands in the ruddy sand.

  The ehrekh pulls itself higher along the tilted deck. I attempt to swing the loaded ballista around, but the pivot was not designed to point astern.

  A voice calls from behind me. “Run, Muulthasa!”

  I yank at the ballista again and again, trying to bring it to bear. I pray the gods will allow me to turn it on the beast, but they have apparently cast a deaf ear to my plight. I spin when the hollow sounds of its footsteps become too loud, too terrible to bear unseen.

  The thing towers above me, and I know I am about to die. It grabs my leg and pulls me away from the weapon. I slide down and lose my hold. My head cracks against the deck, and for a while I can hear only high-pitched sounds.

  A blur of motion shoots in from my right. Blood sprays my face and neck, so hot it burns. The ehrekh rears back and releases
a howl so loud I clamp my hands over my ears.

  Hands grab me about the shoulders and yank me to my feet. I stumble over the edge of the tilted ship and run, blind from the acrid blood.

  We are running to our last ship, Night Wind, and though I am too addled to understand everything around me, I realize we have escaped.

  That some of us have escaped.

  The Night Wind takes us into her arms and carries us away, but we are mindful of what has been lost. Kaliil is dead, and the men—even the rahib—turn to me to see them through. They tell me the ehrekh took a bolt from the other ballista, that it lay motionless as we fled the remaining ehrekh’s rage. If the gods allow any fortune to shine on us this day, the first ehrekh still lies on the deck of our ship, its lifeblood spilled.

  As I sit in the solitude of the captain’s cabin, I despair. Sytaatha had the right of it. Even if the ehrekh lay dead, the other will hound us until we are dead to the last man. I kneel and pray long into the night for Alenha’s future, wishing I had been able to be part of it ...

  ... and wake without knowing I had fallen sleep.

  Sunlight streams through the open shutters, but the wind is up, sending the sands to blowing in great swaths. The moment I close the shutters, a thought enters my consciousness, one I had been chasing for days.

  Six years ago was the night I left my wife, the night my guard unit and I were ordered to spirit Queen Rossanal and her handmaid away from the city. I remember much of it like it happened yesterday. I saw the queen clearly only a handful of times during our two-week flight from her cousin, who was then Lord Sulamin. She was veiled every time, but her eyes were distinct—her left eye off ever so slightly from the other, their color the deepest green I have ever seen.

  It is that gaze I had forgotten.

  I order Rafaf to bring Azadeh to me. She treads carefully into the cabin a few minutes later with her son held protectively before her. When she sees the seriousness in my face, her head droops, and she stares at Rafaf until he removes his hold of her.

  “They’re after you, aren’t they?” I ask when we’re alone.

  She, Queen Rossanal, the woman I swore my life to protect, stares at me with those serious green eyes, and nods. The hold on her child tightens, and I wonder if she fears I will simply take her out to the deck and throw her to the sands.

  I pace, unable to place the last of the pieces. “Why?” I ask. “Why would the king send them now? And what would make you brave the return to Harrahd?”

  The queen doesn’t answer, but she holds her son closer, and it’s as if she has pointed to where the puzzle pieces aught to go. Her son. He is five at least, the right age for her to have been pregnant when she fled Harrahd. Could it be? Could this boy...

  “He is the rightful king?” I ask.

  The ehrekh’s lonely call plays over the desert.

  The queen’s eyes pool with tears. “Would you serve your king as you served your queen?” Her voice has lost its royal luster; perhaps the desert has burned it from her.

  I kick the captain’s chair, sending it crashing into the far side of the cabin. “You abandoned us! In foreign lands, without warning, without money, and with no hope of survival! King Sulamin’s men found our trail within weeks. He began plucking our lives like feathers from a dead pheasant. I am one of only three remaining of the nineteen who rescued you.”

  She brushes one hand deliberately through her son’s golden-brown hair. “I had another to worry about.”

  “But you were the queen! You could have received help from the kyman in Ilinnon or the king of Jabatti. You could have—”

  The queen holds up one slender hand, a tear slipping down her cheek. “I was little more than a child myself,” she says. “I didn’t know if one of you might be loyal to Sulamin. I couldn’t trust you as a whole, and I didn’t know which one of you to trust, so I trusted no one.”

  “You stole my wife and child from me.”

  “I know. If we get back to Harrahd, I would see you reunited.”

  And now it seems her fears were justified, for my fingers ache to throw her from the ship. How can she expect me, for my men, to help her back to Harrahd after all she’s done? And to act as though she could simply repair my life with a wave of her royal hand...

  “Get back to your cabin,” I say.

  “My brother has prepared the way—”

  “Now!”

  Her eyes blaze. She seems ready to oppose me—as she might have once—but the fire in her eyes dims, and she lowers her head. How strange to see the queen I once served so cowed.

  “You loved your kingdom once,” she says quietly.

  “It paid well.”

  “No, I saw it in the way you protected me. You made sure I was safe every step of the way. You barely slept, our first five days from Harrahd.”

  “That wasn’t loyalty. That was fear.”

  She bows her head, still unwilling to meet my eyes. “Then think of your family. You must have heard how dearly Harrahd suffered when my cousin stole the reins from my husband. How it still suffers.”

  I open my mouth to spit back a reply...

  But how can I? How can I turn my back on my Alenha? For she is Harrahd to these desert-dry eyes. Anything I do for the queen I do for Alenha as well, and our child.

  “Uhammad! Uhammad, Wake up!”

  It was Jalaad, screaming into his ear. The call of the fyndrenna was so strong that a vision of Queen Rossanal’s beautiful face was all he could think of, but then a long, mournful wail filled the cool desert air, and the closeness of it allowed him to fend off the call of the spice. Uhammad managed to sit upright and scan the horizon. His balance swam and he fell back to the sand.

  “Get up you fat fool, or we’re all dead!”

  Jalaad dragged Uhammad to his feet and led him to the nearby cutter. As soon as they reached the top of the gangway, Riisi pulled anchor and they slid northward under a sky brilliant with dusk.

  Uhammad shook his head to clear it of the haze. “Have you seen it? The ehrekh?”

  “No, but it’s close enough to kiss my hairy backside, I can tell you that. We’re sailing back to Sanandira, Uhammad. I won’t risk my life any further over memories.”

  “It won’t do any good. We’ll be hunted wherever we go.”

  “We will not...” Jalaad’s words trailed off as he glanced at the horizon. “You found something...”

  Uhammad tipped his head toward Riisi, who gripped the wheel and stared intently at the horizon. “The boy,” Uhammad said softly. “He is the reason we’re being followed. The beast wishes him dead.”

  “Riisi? Speak sense.”

  “Riisi’s mother, the woman that Kaliil took aboard in Ilinnon...”

  “I remember.”

  “She was the queen. Queen Rossanal.”

  Jalaad opened his mouth to argue, but Uhammad talked over him. “Her eyes, Jalaad. Do you remember her eyes?”

  Jalaad looked back at Riisi and swallowed. His expression softened from doubt and anger to one of outright worry. “The crown prince?”

  “Just so, old friend.” Uhammad leaned against the larboard gunwale, his stomach curdling as Riisi guided them down a steep dune. “The ehrekh were sent by Sulamin to prevent the queen’s return, though I don’t think he knew about her son.”

  Jalaad slipped to the deck. “We have another two hours of sailing at most. Then hours of darkness before the silver moon rises.”

  “Yes, but I know where Muulthasa was headed,” Uhammad replied. “Irhüd’s Finger, the old fort there.”

  The ehrekh’s call echoed over the cooling desert, as if it were laughing at their foolish attempt to save themselves.

  “And what good will a ruined fort do us?”

  “They saved him, Jalaad. They saved Riisi. If a boy can escape its reach, then so can we.”

  Uhammad jumped up from the gunwale, for the ship was heading straight for a rocky outcropping. He shoved Riisi aside and pulled hard to larboard, and the outcropping s
craped by.

  Riisi’s eyes were wide with fright.

  Jalaad rounded on the boy, his fists gripped tightly, making the gaunt muscles along his forearms stand out. “How many times have I told you to keep your eyes on the sand?”

  “Jalaad, take the wheel,” Uhammad said.

  Jalaad ignored him. Riisi, swallowing back tears, slid stern along the gunwale.

  “So help me, Jalaad, if you don’t take this wheel, I’m going to snap you like a carrot!”

  Jalaad turned, his face angry, but he obeyed and allowed Uhammad to guide Riisi to the rear of the cutter. They sat on the bench there as the ehrekh’s harroon sounded once more.

  “Something came to you just then, didn’t it?”

  Riisi stared sternward and shook his head.

  Uhammad turned Riisi’s face until the boy’s eyes met his. “It did, and you’d better tell me what it was.”

  I remember the ehrekh, Riisi signed. I see him now. He... Riisi began to cry—a rough, haggard sound, the only thing his ruined throat allowed him.

  “Tell me, son. It’ll help.”

  I remember my mother... I remember what the ehrekh did to her. I was alone on a dune, with my mother and ... the guardsman from the ships—the tall one with hard eyes. The ehrekh tore them ... tore them...

  Riisi’s breath came in sucking gasps. His tears flowed freely.

  “Finish the tale, boy. Get it out, now, here.” Uhammad hated himself for forcing him to relive such memories, but there was little choice.

  Riisi hit his thigh with a tightly balled fist. I can’t remember.

  “Try!”

  He beat his thighs, over and over and over. I can’t remember!

  Uhammad grabbed his fists. “All right, son. All right. We have time yet. We’ll find a way out of this.”

  It was then that Uhammad noticed Jalaad. He was looking sternward as the ship sailed forward. Uhammad turned.

  And nearly wept.

  Along the horizon, the glowing sails of a three-masted ship could be seen. Sulamin’s warship, only hours away now. If the ehrekh didn’t get them...

  He stifled the thoughts and took the wheel. He refused to give up now. Not while blood still coursed through their veins. He guided the cutter to the rocky ridge called Irhüd’s Finger, upon which stood a crumbling ruin of a fort. They pulled around the promontory, only to find an abandoned husk of a ship sitting half-buried in the dunes.