by Ben Galley
She heard the shuffle of sand and cracked an eye open. Only embers remained of the fire, but their faint ruby glow still lit the crags of a face sitting opposite her. For a moment, she thought it was Ghyrab, and then noticed the long, lank hair, and a hunch far too crooked to be the bargeman.
Slowly propping herself onto her elbow, Nilith’s other hand slid to the dagger on her thigh. She’d taken it from the wrecked Ghoul camp under the light of morning, once the dunewyrms had eaten their fill. The scimitar was embedded in the sand near her head. She had also taken another triggerbow from a dead soldier, with three bolts stuck in it.
Nilith met the woman’s eyes. They looked like spheres of grey wool hiding diamonds in their centres. There was something familiar about them, and about her clothes, if a bundle of rags could be called clothing.
‘Beldam,’ Nilith whispered. Her hand stayed on her blade. There were more lines in the woman’s face and deeper bags under her eyes than last time she had seen her. There was a quiver in her chapped lips.
‘Aye,’ she croaked.
‘How did you get here?’
‘With better fuckin’ luck than you did. Got into some trouble, I see?’ The woman raised a shaky hand to point at the bruises still spread over Nilith’s face like a faded map.
‘Have you been following me?’
‘I ’ave.’
The beldam must have been short on customers to trail one this far, Nilith thought. ‘I can’t pay you for any—’ She was interrupted by a short gasp.
‘Healin’. Is that what you want?’ Quivering hands dug deep into pockets, and a pinch of dust was thrown to the fire. The embers sputtered, turning green.
Nilith pulled the dagger from its sheath as the beldam began to shuffle around the fire towards her. The old woman halted at the glint of the blade as it caught the sickly glow.
‘What’s wrong, witch?’ Nilith challenged her, whispering lest she wake the others.
Black teeth came to gnaw at flaked lips. ‘I took too much.’
‘What?’
‘From you. I took too fuckin’ much and now the balance is skewed.’
‘I—’
The beldam scratched at her head furiously, as if a horde of lice had made camp in her ragged hair. ‘Winds’re changing. Sands shifting. The Nyx sours…’ She faltered, looking north. The lights of the distant city were like the coals of countless dozy fires, scattered across the horizon and blurry in the haze. ‘Life is not what it was for a woman of the old ways. When I saw your gems, your belief, I took too much. Ma’at dictates I make amends.’
The beldam’s hands clawed at the sand, as if the imbalance she had spoken of had needles that pierced her skin. Nilith’s eyes were growing heavy in the green light. Something about the thick smoke wafting from it made her head loll.
‘You stay away!’ she mumbled, watching the witch shuffle closer. ‘I need to get back to the city.’ Nilith waved her dagger in one last feeble arc before her head met the earth. ‘Farazar…’
‘Then luck you’ll need,’ came the whisper. ‘Bones and skin will mend themselves, but balance must be given or taken.’ Nilith felt the woman’s breath in her ear. It sounded strained, sad. Lost.
Nilith woke with a start, narrowly avoiding stabbing Ghyrab as she reared up onto her knees, dagger still in hand and waggling.
‘Mercy!’ he said, skipping away as fast as his old bones would let him. Anoish whinnied nearby disapprovingly.
Nilith caught herself and her breath along with it, and sat down to rub the sleep from her eyes.
Ghyrab sat nearby, resting tentatively on his heels. He too had taken a knife from the bandit camp, and it protruded from his boot. ‘No sign of that falcon or the ghost. We thought we’d let you sleep on. Well, I did. Horse ’ad nothing to do with it. Needed the healin’. Some good it’s done you, by the looks of it.’
The bargeman pointed a finger and Nilith probed herself, feeling the smaller lumps and scabbed-over cuts, now clean and greasy with the dab of oils.
‘The sand-witch…’
‘Witch?’
‘A beldam.’
Ghyrab shook his head. ‘Probably bad dreams, Yer Majesty. Desert gives ’em to you, the nomads say. That’s why I stick to the riv—’
‘No,’ Nilith cut him off, getting to her feet. ‘She was here.’
She cast around for tracks other than theirs, which the breeze had turned to faint pockmarks. There were no others; no foot or hoofprints for a dozen yards around their camp.
‘What’s got into you?’
‘A woman came here last night. The beldam I met in the Long Sands. She was babbling something about balance.’
Ghyrab picked at his fingernails. ‘The nomads also say never trust a beldam, and if you do, then never cheat a beldam.’
‘And just who are these all-knowing nomads, if you please? I cheated nobody!’ Nilith snapped, looking to the horse instead. Anoish skipped away from her, as grumpy as she was. Perhaps they had all slept through strange dreams. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘She wanted something. For her, not for me. Something about balance and ma’at.’ She kneaded her brow, trying to recall. All she saw in her mind was green fire.
There was silence as Ghyrab pondered. ‘Sounds like a dream, if’n you ask me.’
Nilith conceded with a huff. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
With no further talk of witches, she and Ghyrab mounted the horse and began their gallop north. Nilith pressed Anoish harder than she would have liked. Farazar had no need for sleep, and had likely travelled through the night just to spite her. Who knew how many miles he had put between them while she had dreamed of old crones and green flames?
Nilith explored her body between the movements of the horse. Her legs no longer felt sore. Nor did her backside, now accustomed to Anoish’s spine. Her jaw had ceased its clicking, and her breathing came easier instead of setting her ribs alight. Perhaps it was all down to a deep and deserved sleep, she thought, and yet she couldn’t shake the dream from behind her eyes. Whenever she grew distracted from watching the dunes, she found the beldam’s words echoing in her mind. She tried to piece them together, knit them into sense.
The winds are changing. The Nyx sours.
Ma’at Nilith understood better than most. It was what had set her on this path in the first place. But what it had to do with the Nyx, she had no clue.
A change in the landscape managed to distract her. Wide streaks of colour began to paint the plain ochre sand. Anoish’s hooves met reds, bronze greens, greys and even a faint blue. As the streaks began to stretch and elongate, so did the dunes. Like the swell of the ocean meeting a shore, they became regular and evenly spaced instead of the half-hearted mazes they seemed to enjoy so much. Their peaks flattened, as if the wind had eaten away at their height, and the going became easier.
The desert knew no true kindness, and what mercies it gave were always countered by another form of hardship. Though the terrain became gentler, fierce winds had carved great troughs between the dunes. No wonder, when they stretched so evenly east to west. The wind had no challenge here, and it raced along the strange channels as if it relished the opportunity. The only respite seemed to come on the dunes’ flat peaks, where they could listen to the howl below them, and wipe the sand from their eyes.
Nilith gave her head a few thumps to shake the grit out of one ear. After ducking into three of the channels, she had taken to wrapping her borrowed cloak around her head and trusting the horse to guide them. ‘What new evils are these?’ she called out. She had not seen these in her journey south.
Ghyrab, who had barely spoken a word all morning and most of the afternoon, muttered something in Arctian she did not understand.
‘What?’
‘The Race Ruts!’
‘And what are they?’
‘Roads, of sorts.’
Nilith teased another answer from him, like a stubborn splinter from a fingertip. ‘For what?’
&nbs
p; ‘You don’t know? Nomads, mostly. Though they’re few these days. Thousands of years old, their tribes are. The Windchasers, or Jubub in Arctian. Or the Akanzi, the Whorltreaders. There’s the Meernabi too, though I don’t know what it means in Common.’
‘Who makes these channels?’
‘Nobody. The wind does,’ he said moodily. ‘Just as the river made my canyon.’
Their stilted conversation was paused as they descended into another of the Ruts. The wind battered them, threatening to steal their clothes as well as their breath. Nilith breathed as slowly as she could through the cloth of the cloak, and still she crunched grit between her teeth.
When Anoish had slogged his way to the top of the next dune, she decided to give him a rest. She slid from the horse’s back and shook the sand from her body. It fell from her in a cloud.
‘How many more of these?’
Ghyrab shrugged.
‘If I’ve offended you, I apologise again.’
The bargeman’s eyes met hers briefly and he nodded, though his face remained firmly downturned. ‘Better be a nice barge, this replacement you promised.’
Nilith cracked a smile, feeling her scabbed lips split anew. ‘The nicest,’ she said around the taste of blood. ‘You’ll be back sailing the Ashti in no time.’
As it turned out, there were four more Ruts, or so her squinting scrutiny of the striped landscape told her. She saw the sand blowing up from the rim of the next one in great swirls, and huffed to herself while Ghyrab fetched the waterskins. The bits of the Ghouls’ camp that had survived the dunewyrms had furnished them with enough supplies to reach the city. They had clothing, food, water, weapons, and yet she was still travelling one ghost and one body short.
Nilith stared out at the Race Ruts, privately simmering, and wondered how Farazar had fared with them. Part of her hoped they would find him curled up with arms crossed in the next channel, refusing to go on. The other part knew his stubbornness all too well to flirt with such fancy.
‘Come on,’ she said, waving to the horse and the bargeman. ‘Let’s clear these ruts before the sun sets.’
No doubt missing his tiller, Ghyrab took up Anoish’s reins and led him on, leaving Nilith to walk behind them and stew. Her eyes scoured the dunes for a flash of blue, but she was disappointed. Before she was blinded by the rushing wind of the next rut, she threw up her cloak and trudged on.
This channel was wider than the others, and although the gale was lesser here, it had more time to harry them over the larger stretch. By the time they reached the peak, they were desperate for another rest.
‘Three more,’ she sighed.
On the edges of the next rut sat a curious collection of stones. Boulders had once lain hidden in the sand, but the wind had uncovered them like thieves in a grain hoard, and taught them a lesson in time and erosion. Most of them were pillar-shaped: tall and skinny, yet whittled into odd shapes by the harsh winds. They too were striped like the desert around them. Where one layer was more mulish than the next, it had resisted the carving, becoming flat and saucer-shaped. Nilith noticed others where the reverse had happened; where holes had appeared in the stone. They were completely natural, and yet Nilith’s mind tried its hardest to find chisel grooves or sculptor’s marks.
She felt an urge to run her hands over the smooth surface of the pillars, but before she got halfway, an even more curious sight appeared beyond them.
‘Erm…’
A donkey bearing an enormous and oddly-shaped pack on its back rose above the rut. Nilith would have unsheathed her sword, thinking another traveller had snuck up on her, but the beast kept rising. And rising… Straight up, and with no jolt to its gait.
Its legs came into sight above the sand, then its hooves, and Nilith saw there was nothing beneath them but air. Like the rest of the donkey, they hung limply from the great pack. A single rope was fastened about its neck. It was taut, its other end disappearing into the rut.
‘Ghyrab?’ she hissed, too confused to put volume to her words. She stared at the canvas-and-wicker contraption on the donkey’s back, examining how it shook and squeaked with every gust of wind. The donkey wriggled in mid-air, heehawing mournfully, and as the pack swayed, Nilith saw how wide it was, like the spread wings of a bird.
Hearing the braying over the gusts, Ghyrab turned. Concerned shouts rose up from below. There came a ring as Nilith drew her scimitar. She hurried to the edge of the dune, keeping one eye on the donkey hovering above her head. In Krass, there was a saying concerning a correlation between the occurrence of impossible events and pigs achieving flight. She wondered whether there was a flying donkey equivalent in the Arc.
‘Nomads!’ Ghyrab called out, hurrying after her. ‘Windchasers.’
Below in the rut, a whole caravan of donkeys had come to a halt. Nilith saw similar sets of wicker wings below, and from above she saw they were a squashed triangular shape. A score of men in sky-blue robes stood around the gap in the caravan where the intrepid donkey had floated free. Nilith would have called it a daring escape had the beast not still been whinnying woefully.
Several men had hold of its rope, and were struggling to keep it from climbing further into the bruised sky. Others were pointing at the ridge, where they had spotted Nilith with her sword. Triggerbows were raised. The shouts became frenzied.
Nilith waved her arms and thrust the sword into the sand for all to see. With a sharp whistle, Anoish was at her side, and together they sidled down the dune into the windy rut. The robed men approached cautiously, wearing goggles fashioned of crystal and brass. Nilith immediately envied them; her cloak was still flapping maniacally about her head.
Thick ribbons of blue fabric wrapped their faces. Short horns, rounded at the tips, poked out from their foreheads. Bushes and strands of beards and moustaches protruded through every available gap. They chattered at her in a strange language. It was unlike any dialect Nilith had heard during all her years in the Arc. She was clueless, and instead relied on the common solution to every language barrier: a great deal of pointing.
She jabbed her finger at Anoish, at the rope, and then to the donkey still dangling aloft. Twice more, she repeated the dance before they understood her, and began to wrap the rope around the horse’s muscled shoulders. Somehow, they found time to admire his stout flanks and bright eyes, as if he were a product for sale.
Anoish heaved forwards as nomad after nomad leapt to pull the rope down with their weight. Their movements hinted of practise; as if this was not the first of their donkeys to develop a taste for flying.
Within a few minutes, the donkey was hovering several feet off the sand. Its legs cantered as if it were already on solid ground. One heave later and it landed, promptly beginning to kick at any nomad who came near. They seemed accustomed to this, too, and with the power of numbers the nomads gently wrestled the beast into calm.
Ghyrab hobbled down the dune, conveniently late to the party. He held his hands up, intertwined in some greeting. The nomads recognised it and returned the gesture. Nilith did her best to copy it, and broad smiles broke out between their blue wrappings and wiry beards.
‘Only the Windchaser men use that greeting. You use this one,’ Ghyrab told her, joining his fingers together like an urchin.
‘Ah.’ Nilith performed the new movement, and a cheer went up from the small crowd. They gathered around her, touching her shoulders respectfully. Nilith flinched at first, but at the bargeman’s scowl, she allowed it. Her hand gradually left the hilt of her knife.
‘You speak their language?’ she asked, having to yell over the wind.
Ghyrab shrugged. ‘Some, not much. We’ve crossed paths before, where the Race Ruts meet a westward bend in the Ashti. Traded a bit, but like I said, they’re a rare sight. More now than ever.’
‘Why?’
‘Your precious city is why! Soulstealers don’t have any qualms about hunting them. No respect.’
The nomads were watching them swap their foreign words like a
ball being batted back and forth.
‘Ask them if any speak Commontongue!’ ordered Nilith.
‘Shesua sikri Arctiri?’
They mumbled between themselves until one clicked his fingers and ran up the line of the caravan. Shielding her face against the wind, Nilith watched him reach a large wagon, also sporting its own wings, and bow to its door. It was flung open and a figure in inordinately long robes jumped to the sand. Nilith waited while they came closer, watching their tendrils of blue fabric flail wildly like streamers in a sandstorm. The man walked behind, being repeatedly slapped by the errant clothing. Fashion and necessity had never been the closest of allies.
Nilith made the sea urchin gesture when the figure stood before her, closer than comfort, eyes and face hidden behind wrappings and goggles. The gesture was returned, and a female voice emanated from the blue cloth. A long pair of horns sprouted from her temples, sharp and curled.
‘Travellers?’ she asked, turning her back to the wind so she could talk instead of shout. Nilith copied her.
‘Yes.’
‘Traders?’
‘No, sorry.’
There was a collective groan from the group as the woman translated.
‘Where headed?’
‘Araxes.’
This did not need translating. Nilith thought she heard hissing on the wind. Several men slid away to tend the donkeys.
‘Always city. Never deserts. They are drier for it.’
Nilith didn’t bother to justify her direction, but she understood their annoyance. Araxes was like a lantern, drawing moths from far and wide. Except in this case, the moths were people, trade, and prosperity. It left little lifeblood for the deserts and Duneplains.
‘Where are you headed?’
‘Hebus. We have spices and stones to sell.’ The nomad held up a hand, showing a stone of red carnelian embedded in her palm, bound with matching silk.
Hebus was as far east as a person could get without falling off the Arc into the sea. It was an expedition that made Nilith’s look like a trundle around a courtyard. ‘That’s a long way.’
