by Ben Galley
‘That’s not what this is,’ Nilith insisted. ‘There will be little reward for me. If any.’
‘You always this fucking cryptic?’
Nilith looked across the Duneplains, ever wary despite ridding herself of the Ghouls. There was a sandstorm billowing in the west, distant for the time being, and she hoped it would stay that way. She looked north, to where Araxes shimmered in the heat, as if it lay under the waters of a mountain stream. The sprawling edges of the city came closer with every hoofbeat, but to her eyes it seemed to stay still, forever out of reach. Sprawled before it, the rise and fall of dunes and rifts offered a dull path. A few errant roads had begun to appear and coalesce, like tributaries winding out of the desert to join a sea of adobe and sandstone. She squinted. A hundred miles to the Sprawls, she measured. Another hundred to the tower the size of a titan’s spear, standing upright in the earth, and the Grand Nyxwell.
Nilith wondered whether anybody would notice if she just gave up now, went back to the Windchasers, and faded into the desert. Such thoughts had become more numerous in recent days. Louder, too. As always, she leaned to the side of the horse, and spat what saliva she could muster. ‘This is a mantle I should wear myself. As it has been this entire journey. Maybe years before that.’
Bezel laughed shrilly. ‘If you’re not going to tell me, I can only assume it’s because it’s risky as shit. Or you don’t trust me.’
Nilith forced a smirk. His talk had set a fresh thudding in her head. She hunkered down, holding Anoish’s coarse mane tight. She stared at the falcon, wings beating the air in rapid yet calm succession, his little body arrow straight, keen eyes constantly flicking over the horizon.
‘I trust you.’
His cackle was mocking. ‘Trust is overrated. I don’t need you to trust me. Just keep up your part of the bargain.’
‘And I shall. Though I have been thinking.’
‘I thought I could smell burning…’
‘Why not live on, free to do what you want?’
‘I have done that. I’ve lived two hundred years as a fucking bird. I’ve seen half that many emperors and empresses come and go. I’ve seen parts of this world your maps don’t even have names for. I am fucking bored. Done.’
‘And why not throw your bell into the Nyx? Reach the afterlife. Duat.’
‘Why would I want to spend another two centuries amidst a crowd of fucking dead?’
Nilith was confused. ‘Crowds? What crowds?’
Bezel looked angry, as if remembering some past hurt she’d inflicted on him. ‘It’s the great lie, Nilith. There is nothing beyond life but endless crowds of shades. Whining, crying, waiting, staring at nothing but dead stars. I hovered there for what felt like an age before the Nyxites dragged me back. Most souls don’t linger there long enough to make sense of it, that’s why it’s not spoken of. I would rather be nothing than visit that place again.’
Before Nilith could reply, the falcon tore upwards into the blue so he could look around. She waited for him to come back down, a confession poised on her tongue. She had sworn not to spill her secrets until she was standing over the Grand Nyxwell, but the bird had bared his soul, and Nilith felt the need to do the same. She knew all too well how sharing words could share their weight, and she was already withering under her burden as it was.
But she never got the chance. Bezel announced his return with a screech. ‘There’s a man coming this way.’
Nilith buried her face in Anoish’s mane, feeling exhaustion paw at her. ‘Dangerous looking?
‘Can’t tell. Looks the travelling sort. Coming from the north and west. He’s riding easy on a wagon. Two horses. If we keep going this way, we’ll pass him before sunset.’
‘Just one man?’
‘Unless he’s hiding somebody else under that mound of silks and jewellery he’s wearing. Or on the wagon. Got a sheet over some box.’
‘Silks and jewellery…’ Nilith trailed off, her thoughts turning inwards. She thought of pompous vapid men, standing over Ghyrab’s barge, speaking of tolls, and yelling threats. ‘Keep an eye on him. And where’s my gods-damned husband?’
‘Maybe ten miles ahead, going slower now.’
‘Well, come on!’ Nilith yelled, making her headache flare. ‘Let’s deal with one idiot at a time.’ She kicked the horse with her heels, and Anoish put more speed into his gallop, throwing up a column of orange dust behind them.
‘Blasted beetle!’
The confounded insect had decided it needed a rest. Though it might have trotted about like a faithful steed, it certainly did not follow the rules of day and night.
The day before, it had resolved to take a break for two hours just because it saw a rock it didn’t like. Now it was hunkered down and chattering at a distant sandstorm splayed across the western horizon like a smear of orange dung. Farazar regarded the storm with the same distaste, a hint of fear tugging at his lips.
His last encounter with a sandstorm had been far from pleasant. He spread his hands over his naked frame and remembered the hissing of the sand passing through him, of copper dust stinging him. It was occurrences such as those that reminded Farazar he was dead. Dead as a doorstep. Just another half-life that made up the glowing masses of the Arc.
He snarled and kicked sand at the beetle.
‘Come along, I say!’ He tried again to lead it away, walking a short distance to a cairn of rocks between the dunes and clapping his hands together. They made a soft whump noise, which was altogether disappointing.
‘You dull-witted bastard! I haven’t the time to waste.’
The beetle stared at him with black, soulless eyes, and then back to the storm, clicking its mandibles disconcertingly. Its forked toes dug at the sand, once, twice, thrice, and yet it did not move.
‘Fine!’ Farazar stomped to his body and laid a hand to the rope. It was hard to grip at first, but he had learned to channel his thoughts into his fingers, and soon he was hauling the corpse in foot-long increments through the sand. The beetle watched him impassively, wiggling its horns.
Farazar made it halfway up a dune before he collapsed to his knees, his concentration evaporating. ‘Ugh!’ he yelled. He kicked at his own body in anger. There came a ripping sound, and one of its – his – arms lolled out of the stained, half-shredded sacking. The limb was dried grey and wrinkled, like a prune left under a couch. Where the flesh had escaped the dry heat, it had begun to putrefy, turning black and gelatinous as oil. The plump rice grains of intrepid maggots squirmed here and there. A dark mould filled the veins where blood used to flow, and the nails were bile-yellow shards poking from shrunken fingers.
Farazar’s hand hovered over the cloth. A blue tongue ran across his cold lips as he debated looking at the rest of his body. He held the cloth, lifting it gingerly and unhurriedly. Sunlight showed him a gaunt, grey-brown chest, sunken and slimy, then his neck, where Nilith’s knife had cut him to the spine.
As he revealed black, rotten lips and the crenellations of white teeth grinning at him, Farazar lost his nerve. He dropped the cloth and scrambled to move the arm out of sight. As he grabbed it, he felt its looseness, and immediately plunged it back into the sack with a squelch. It flopped out again, and it took three attempts to wrap it back up. He was glad he had no sense of smell in death. Nor a stomach to empty. Instead, he just gulped with a throat that would never again know saliva.
With a glower, Farazar stared south, looking for a galloping blotch in pursuit of him. His eyes had always been poor, and they were worse in death. With the heat haze, there was nothing but wobbly strips of red, yellow and white, and spikes of salt gathered like misplaced stalagmites.
In the west, the sandstorm was gaining on him. The barrage of sand had reared into the sky, curled like an orange wave poised to come crashing down. It tore across the dunes with all the speed of the gales that drove it. Sand roiled like river rapids at its base, devouring anything in its path. Time was short.
With a curse, Farazar wrenched hims
elf to the top of the dune to look at the city beyond. The miles stretched between him and his shining home, and yet if he squinted he just about pick out the spires of this tal or tor, that bank or chamber. And the Cloudpiercer, three towers thick even at its peak. Its marble flanks shone with the golden light of the afternoon sun, dwarfing every structure for districts around. The Outsprawls were so close he could see the adobe pimples of buildings, domes, minarets, the odd tower, and most importantly, the scratches of roads escaping Araxes.
His gaze followed one road in particular, losing it here and there amongst the dune peaks until it joined up with a blotch lying in a broken crater at the edge of the Sprawls. Farazar shielded his weak eyes, leaning forwards. The structure shone with the brightness of polished metal, yet it looked to be made of black stone. There was a faint haze about it, and that was enough to give him hope. It was a Nyxwell, by the looks of it. Farazar began to grin. Unlike the wild peasant wells, no Nyxwell in Araxes or her Sprawls had ever run dry.
The sand stirred at the peak of the dune, blowing in Farazar’s face, and he looked away, wincing. It was then that he saw the traveller.
A man, a wagon, and a horse for each, all travelling south. He must have been half a mile away, parallel to Farazar’s path. He trotted at no great speed, yet did not dawdle. On the wagon sat a large box, covered in a green tarpaulin. A coat of arms Farazar couldn’t make out was emblazoned on its side, and no doubt also on the man’s flowing white silk trappings and wide-brimmed hat. As he bobbed up and down, Farazar caught the glint of gold on his chest and arms. He was either brave or a dullard, to wear such trinkets whilst wandering the wilds. There were far more bandits and soulstealers in the Duneplains and Long Sands than the Ghouls. However, there was something in the man’s demeanour that spoke confidence, and it perturbed the dead emperor. Farazar was glad his course wouldn’t cross the man’s.
Keeping his face close to the sand, he let the man make his way out of sight, lost between the dunes. It was then that Farazar felt the wind growing. The sand around his glowing fingers began to eddy and swirl.
He half skidded, half tumbled down the dune’s side and kicked sand in the beetle’s face as he came to a violent halt. ‘Up, beetle! Come on, you bastard!’
But the beetle would not be moved, and instead folded its legs close to its thick shell, sucking its head into its neck. Farazar stared up at his body, then back to the cursed creature, and then threw up his hands.
By the time he reached his body and dragged it back down the slope, the sandstorm was poised to strike. Farazar barely made it into the beetle’s shadow before the wind slammed into them. The sudden roar was deafening, and as wave after wave of sand buffeted them, he gritted his teeth, sparkling white as the metal in the rushing storm bit into him.
‘Fuck this desert!’ he howled to the winds.
The beauty of hangovers lay in the fact they were wonderful excuses to sleep. All they demanded of the body was to sit, be still and endure. Though the sitting still part was proving difficult on the back of a galloping, slavering horse, somehow Nilith managed it: slumped and crooked as a crone, with her chin bouncing against her chest. It was a broken sleep, but sleep nonetheless, and the healing sort, good for ill stomachs and churning minds.
As such, the chase had been one of pieced-together moments. A jolt would wrench her eyes open for a brief time, just long enough to see the limbs of the sandstorm curling across the sky; or Bezel, a black kite against the endless blue; or a pillar of gathered salt, tall like a termite mound and stained with purples and pinks. Once she saw a herd of long-faced sandrabbits, scattering before Anoish’s whinnying. The sun hopped from one place to the next along its arc. When Nilith finally managed to drag herself from drowsiness, it was wallowing in the west, half hidden by the storm.
‘Where is he?’ she croaked, throat clogged with sand. Nobody answered. Bezel was still above her, wheeling in spirals to keep an eye on both their prey and their tracker.
Nilith waved for him, whistling as loudly as her dry lips would allow, and he fell from the sky with all the force of a marble block. He took a rest on Anoish’s head, much to the horse’s grumbling, and kept his yellow talons curled.
‘Where is Farazar?’
‘Closer. Seems to be trying to veer away from the storm.’
‘He didn’t like the last one.’
The falcon eyed the angry orange storm, now spread from northwest to southwest. ‘That makes two of us. It’ll catch us soon.’
‘He’ll try to hide, or run for shelter. We’ll find him.’
Nilith tugged the reins, spurring Anoish on once more. With a cooler wind on her face, she felt the best she had all day, which, by any other day’s standards, was just past half dead. Her head still throbbed with every hoofbeat, and the anxiety still clung on, but she was gaining on the ghost and that was all that mattered.
‘How long have you got?’ asked Bezel, taking to the air again. His pinions twitched in the growing breeze.
‘I’ve lost count of the days,’ Nilith said in a small voice. ‘Maybe a dozen left?’
‘You’re cutting it fine.’
‘I am painfully aware, Bezel.’ Every day since slitting Farazar’s throat, the spell of binding had loomed over her like a second shadow. And each day that passed, it grew larger and darker, not unlike the sandstorm churning along the horizon.
There was no arguing with the problem. No solution but to move faster. Though the Tenets of the Bound Dead may have been written by man, they were gods-given. Unfortunately for Nilith, the third Tenet concerning the window of binding was unflinchingly clear. If she failed, Farazar’s ghost would fade into the air, and his body would be worth less than the meat it was made of. No binding. No claim.
It may have been the manifestation of her hopes, but Nilith swore she could see the glowing lump of Farazar appearing now and again as he mounted a dune. She wondered sourly how he had gotten hold of an insect to ride. More so, how in the Reaches a creature had tolerated him this long without bucking him and striding off into the Duneplains.
Nilith thanked the dead gods for the fact she could see no shadows of towns or settlements between her and the Outsprawls. No dark rifts spread across these plains. No lurking bandits. No Nyxwell in sight. That calmed her, though she could not drag her eyes from the edges of Araxes. Those warrens of dust and desperate people were more fickle than the desert. Farazar could lose himself in a moment’s work.
Even without the weight of Ghyrab, Anoish was tiring rapidly. Nilith felt his gait slow as the dust clouds began to fill her view. Half the sky had been claimed by the storm. She looked up at its lofty red tendrils, reaching across the Duneplains as they swirled on the air currents.
Bezel spiralled down to take up residence on the horse’s back. He hid his face from the grit with his wings. Wrapping cloth around her neck and face, Nilith hunkered over the falcon and Anoish’s neck as the wall of sand came racing across the dunes to meet them. It almost knocked her to the earth, but she clung on with aching thighs as the bright sunlight was swallowed by a thick orange haze.
As the storm howled around her, she kept her eyes up and open as wide as she could bear. Narrowed against the lashing grit, they desperately searched for a flash of blue, or the spindly shape of a beetle fighting its way through the howling murk.
And how it howled. This sandstorm was worse than the previous one, as if it knew Nilith’s time in the desert was short and was intent on making a lasting impression. As well as the battering from the curtains of sand, spheres of barbed thorns cartwheeled through the gloom. One slammed into her calf and ripped a bloody hole as a brief greeting. Anoish cried out as another lacerated his flank. Nilith felt the sticky warmth spread across her leg. Baring teeth, she patted his side and he slowed to a trot, then a determined walk. Lightning fizzled in the high reaches of the storm. The bursts of yellow and white momentarily lit the rushing clouds of sand. To Nilith, it looked as though malformed creatures stooped over them, waiting.
For the most part, they trusted completely in forward momentum and pressed on blindly. Nilith spared quick glances through her makeshift wrappings to make sure the ghost hadn’t slipped by. They walked only a small channel of visibility. He could easily have wandered east or west. The more time they spent in the belly of the sandstorm, the greater her anxiety grew.
An hour in the murk felt like a day. By the time Nilith felt its gusts weakening and saw spears of light breaking through the shadows, she had half a mind to swing her legs from the horse and sprint ahead herself.
‘Bezel? Can you find him?’
‘The storm’s not fucking over—’
‘Please!’
The falcon irritably shrugged off his cloth trappings and held out his wings. The storm snatched him away, and she heard his keening shriek mix with the howl of the wind.
He was gone some time. So much, in fact, that Nilith began to give ear to her doubts and fear the worst. Knowing to stay put, she withdrew from Anoish’s back and paced back and forth. It was only as the storm was dying around them, blowing its way south, that she heard the thud of talons meeting sand. The sand still filled the air, hovering on the trailing breeze, and she had to squint to spy Bezel’s waddling shape.
‘I can’t see him. Storm’s not passed yet. I—’
‘Good afternoon!’ hollered a voice, Arctian-lilted and clear as a brass bell.
Nilith’s hand flew to the hilt of her sword. The triggerbow was strapped to Anoish, too slow and too far to reach for. A large shadow appeared in the haze, growing darker by the moment. Bezel took to Anoish’s back, and the empress stood before them both, chin raised and muscles clenched.
‘State your business!’ called Nilith.
There came no reply, only the rattle of something wooden and steady clip-clop of hooves. She bit her lip, fearing an arrow or bolt would fly at her any moment. Her blade inched from its scabbard as the figure materialised from the sand.
A man riding a tall black horse emerged. His flowing silks were cream-coloured, tinged with red in the wake of the sandstorm and late sun. Great gold chains bearing glyphs hung about his neck. They were so numerous and prodigious that Nilith wondered if he struggled to sit upright. His dark-skinned hands were held out by his knees, manicured, open, and empty. His nails were painted a shining cobalt. Red ink tattoos of cogs and number glyphs decorated his powdered cheeks and neck. Covering his head was a flat, wide-brimmed hat; the sort she had seen Grand Builders of the eastern districts wear. Every thread of him spoke Araxes, not Duneplains. There was something both heart-warming and yet altogether disturbing about that.
