Relics of the Desert Tomb

by James Derry

  Jamal didn’t say anything. With the aqrabuamelus approaching before and behind them, he knew that Sygne had won the argument, and he was mostly glad about that. On the other hand, he couldn’t help but sympathize with Ohbo, and he was worried that Sygne’s gibe about the dead might come back to haunt them. Literally.

  ***

  The camels grumbled as Ohbo let them out into the shifting sands. The pudgy man grumbled as well, clucking and cajoling with his ladies as they began their plodding march up the first dune.

  Soon they turned into a trough that kept them hidden from their pursuers. The soft sand beneath them had been furrowed by the wind into reticulations, like flowing patterns of silt on a riverbed. By the time they had emerged from that long, shallow valley of sand, the sandstone trail was at least two miles behind them. The three newest aqrabuamelus had converged on the spot where Sygne had convinced her friends to venture northward. Soon the man-hybrids had disappeared behind the crest of a dune.

  If they were lucky, then the scorpion-men would give up their chase. Sygne imagined what they were thinking: It wasn’t worth the risk to follow those blasphemers into the shifting sands, where the wind reshaped the landscape every week. It was suicide.

  Sygne shook herself out of that train of thought. But it didn’t help that every time she glanced to Ohbo he looked like he was riding to his own funeral. She rode close to Jamal and was relieved to see that he was smiling.

  “They call this place the sea of dunes,” Jamal said. “And it truly does remind me of the ocean. It’s almost… tranquil out here.”

  “One more adventure,” Sygne offered. “Right?” She took a deep breath and tried to absorb some of Jamal’s swaggering optimism. It didn’t take, and so she confessed, “I feel bad about Ohbo. Maybe you were right. Maybe we shouldn’t have let him come with us.”

  Jamal smirked. “He’s fodder, right? Are you saying you apologize?”

  “No. I’m not apologizing.”

  “I can hear you,” Ohbo called over his shoulder. “Sound carries, out in the open sands.”

  “I apologize, Ohbo!” Sygne called.

  “Oh sure,” Jamal muttered. “Apologize to him.”

  Sygne ignored the swordsman. She said, “Tell me why you are sad, Ohbo! Maybe we can help.”

  “Isn’t obvious? I’m worried about traveling into the realm of Tallasmanak.”

  “Tell me about Tallasmanak.” Sygne bit her lip.

  “Tallasmanak is cursed!” Ohbo said. “An eon ago, it was one of the finest cities in the world. Some people say that every citizen was a wizard. They were able to build a magnificent city right in the heart of the wasteland.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Jamal said. “I heard that when Tallasmanak was built, all of Tawr was a jungle made of fruit trees. But in their hubris, the Tallasmanakites unleashed some kind of mystical cataclysm, and turned half of the continent into a desert.”

  Ohbo scoffed. “That’s not true. The Tawr Desert was created long before Tallasmanak—when Eshynihett slit the throat of the land so that abundance could gush forth and feed the people.”

  Jamal rolled his eyes. “Eshynihett. The mythical ‘Godfather of the Gods.’ Even I’m a skeptic on that one.”

  “We know it’s true,” Ohbo protested. “Because you can still see the wound where the Godfather cut open the land. It’s the gigantic canyon that forms the source of the Bedotan River. The Slash.”

  Sygne forced a smile and nodded at both stories. In her mind it was all nonsense.

  Ohbo continued, “Everyone knows that Tallasmanak collapsed because it was built around the Lurker in the Void.”

  “Wait,” Jamal said. “Did you say the ‘Lurker in the Void?’ You think one of the Ancient Ones lives in the middle of the desert?”

  “Yes,” Ohbo said. “The most terrifying of them all.”

  “I’d heard that the Lurker was somewhere in the Sanguine Sea,” Sygne said.

  Jamal protested, “There’s no way the Lurker is scarier than the Dweller Under Dreams. I’ve seen the Dweller!”

  “Isn’t the Dweller Under Dreams situated in Krit?” Ohbo asked. “That’s where you saw it?”

  “Yes…”

  Ohbo crossed his arms over his chest. “And Krit still exists, doesn’t it? The Lurker in the Void killed the city that was built around it.”

  Jamal scoffed. “You didn’t see Krit when we left it. It was fairly ruined.”

  “Even the name,” Ohbo said. “‘Dweller.’ What’s scary about that?”

  “It’s totally terrifying!” Jamal shouted. “It Dwells there! That’s what it is. Not what it does. It’s existential! Which makes it far scarier. The Lurker… What is that? It sounds desperate.”

  Ohbo crossed his arms over his chest. “‘Dwell’ means ‘sit.’ That’s not scary.”

  “Wait!” Sygne shouted. “I studied ancient cultures for years. And I’ve always read that the Lurker in the Void lived somewhere along the west coast of Embhra, along the Sanguine Sea. Jamal, is that what you’ve heard?”

  Jamal shook his head, obviously frustrated to be interrupted mid-argument. “No. In Gjuir-Khib they say that the Lurker lurks in the among the lagoons of Ardhia, to the south. It definitely doesn’t lurk in the desert! The Firstspawn all started by living in the ocean.”

  “But all of this world used to be ocean,” Ohbo said. “Look around you. Do these dunes not remind you of the sea? Back in the First Days, this land was underwater, but the Ancient Ones awoke, and made stones and sand rise out of the sea.”

  “Geological origins aside,” Sygne said, “I wonder where the Issulthraqis will search for the Lurker? Considering all the confusion, they could be searching across the continent for years. That’s good news, at least.”

  Jamal shrugged. “Don’t you think the Fabled Pantheon knows? They’ll tell the army where to go.”

  “Who would want to find them?” Ohbo asked. “Let me tell you what the Lurker in the Void did to Tallasmanak.”

  “According to you,” Jamal remarked.

  “Yes! According to me.”

  “Go on,” Sygne said.

  And Ohbo launched into his tale. “It is said that three hundred years ago, the people of Tallasmanak found the resting place of the Lurker—in the middle of the shifting sands—and they built their city there.

  “They were worshippers of the Ancient Ones, and they believed that the Lurker would bring their dead back to life. So they buried their loved ones in a great necropolis, and lit memorial fires, and waited. But the fires unleashed a nightmare. When the dead rose from their graves, they could walk, but they could not think. And the Lurker in the Void left its mark on the land. It formed great walls of climbing rock around the necropolis.”

  Sygne looked to Jamal. “Lava?” The swordsman shrugged.

  Ohbo continued, “I think the founders of Tallasmanak must have been fanatics. They continued burying their dead within the Lurker’s ring of stone, and they continued lighting fires. The walls grew higher and higher until they curved inward and closed out the sky. They formed a giant dome that sealed away the dead and their mourners. If anyone remained outside of that dome—well, they finally fled the desert. And from their mouths spread their story—and a powerful warning. ‘Anyone who finds the desert’s City of the Dead risks falling into the Void forever.’”

  ***

  Ohbo’s mood seemed to brighten after their discussion of Tallasmanak and the Lurker in the Void. Sygne wasn’t surprised, necessarily. She had found that talking through one’s fears could sometimes help to alleviate them.

  They stopped as the sun settled low over the dunes. Sygne checked her compass against the North Star. She showed Ohbo how it worked. The compass was composed primarily of a piece of lodestone that was clamped inside a wooden ornament shaped like a turtle. The turtle had a tail made of an iron nail.

  “I found the lodestone five years ago. One of my Mentors, Shen Yong, tau
ght me how to fashion it this way. She was a great inventor from Prathet-Sin.”

  Sygne balanced the turtle on the point of a knife, and the turtle spun slightly and rested with its tail pointing north. “Go ahead,” she said to Ohbo. “Nudge it. You’ll see it will turn back to that direction.”

  Ohbo beamed at her. “You amaze me again, Bright Star.”

  Sygne smiled back at him, but she didn’t mention the fact that balancing the turtle-compass on a knife would be extra difficult on a shambling camel, and that meant they’d have to stop often to check their direction. Or pick out distant landmarks during scheduled stops—then aim for them and hope for the best.

  Jamal swaggered over. “You think that’s amazing? Show him your fireworks, Sygne.”

  “Fire… works? What is that?” Somehow, Ohbo’s round face grew even more eager.

  “Show him,” Jamal said.

  “No. I’m not going to launch beacons into the air, marking our position for any aqrabuamelus that might still be tracking us.” Sygne rifled into her pocketbook and produced a wedge of crystal.

  “What’s that?” Jamal asked. Ohbo was curious, but silent.

  “It’s called a prism,” Sygne eyed the sun. It was low in the sky, casting shadows between dunes, but it was still bright enough to beam through the prism. She said, “It will produce a rainbow, but no attention-grabbing explosions.”

  “A rainbow?” Ohbo scanned the sky.

  “No,” Sygne chuckled. “A much smaller one. What’s your favorite color? We’ll see it on the prism.”

  The cameleer paused. His eyes hopped up and down, from Sygne’s red hair to her blue eyes. Red or blue? Sygne wondered if he was trying to decide which of her unusually pigmented features he personally liked best—or which one he thought she would take as more of a compliment.

  His cherubic face bunched; then he exhaled and turned away. “I can’t decide… Ahhh!” Ohbo seemed physically pained. Then his eyes settled on his camel Phoebe. “Oh!” He was instantly happy again. “Brown! That’s my favorite color. It truly is.”

  Jamal snickered. “Brown? You are a desert rat.”

  Sygne bit her lip. “Brown won’t show up in the spectrum because it’s not a hue.”

  “A ewe?” Ohbo frowned, as if he was worried Sygne’s scientician trick would involve animal sacrifice.

  Jamal barked, “Just show him the trick!”

  Sygne held up the crystal so that it flashed in the sun. She tilted it, and a band of colors stretched across the front of Ohbo’s robe. The cameleer leapt back for a moment, as if he expected the colors to burn him. He tentatively patted his chest, but the colors now swam over his hand.

  “It’s beautiful...”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  Jamal muttered, “Not as good as fireworks, though.”

  Ohbo hopped, as if he had just remembered something. “There is something I want to show you, Sygne!”

  “What is it?”

  “My own bit of mystical beauty in the desert.” Ohbo hurried to his camel Lily and pulled a thick, long roll of fabric from her back. He heaved it into Sygne’s arms. Sygne braced herself, but she was surprised that the fabric seemed so light.

  “What is this?”

  Ohbo’s face lifted with the hint of a smile. “Silk. Actually, it was blessed by an Eastern mage to offer seventy-seven years of comfort. In that time, it will never rip, never drip, and it will always smell like jasmine.”

  “Is this your tent?” Sygne asked. “It’s made out of silk?”

  “No!” His eyes twinkled. Once again, Ohbo had cheered up almost instantly. “This is our tent liner. Our tent is made from goat hair. It’s sturdy and it holds in warm or cool air. And the weave even expands in the rain, to make it waterproof. This,” Ohbo gently patted the roll of silk, “is just a bit of indulgence.”

  “It’s nice actually,” Jamal said through a mouthful of jerky. “Ohbo, where are your blankets? I’ll help roll those out.”

  Sygne grinned. “I’m glad to see that you’re not too disgruntled about sleeping in a tent. You were so irritated by the Djungan’s sheets…”

  Jamal said, “You know I’m used to roughing it in the wild. But when I re-enter civilization, I expect my accommodations to be… well, civilized.” Jamal nodded to the cameleer. “Besides, like Ohbo said, he has ensorcelled silk! I can’t vouch for its magical properties, but it certainly smells lovely.”

  8 – The Dragon Blood Tree

  They rode for two days through a sea of dunes. While Jamal and Ohbo seemed relatively comfortable in the harsh conditions, for Sygne, it was a misery.

  For one thing, there was always the sand. It got under her clothes, into the creases of her elbows, her knees, her neck. It slid down her soft stocking-boots and filled the gaps between her toes. Grit stuck to her face—it rolled down into her eyes on drops of sweat. It insinuated itself into her mouth—so ever-present that she didn’t notice it until she took a swig of water. Then that moment of relief was partially ruined by a texture of silt passing down her throat. Sand. Everywhere and everlasting.

  The sand shifted under their camels’ feet, veiling their path. The horizon shimmered through heat mirages. And always there was a jangling of agoraphobic terror just on the fringes of Sygne’s psyche. The desert was too wide, and expansive with ways to disorient her, blister her, dehydrate and starve her.

  They had barely set out on their third day through the sands, when Sygne noticed a huge swell rising from the horizon. “Look at that,” she said. “Is that the largest sand dune in the world?”

  “Look there!” Jamal shouted. “A tree!”

  Partially obscured on the other side of the crest of the dune, a fuzz of darkness stood out against the sky. Sygne realized it was a crosshatch of branches.

  “Its a big tree,” Jamal gushed, “and where there are trees there’s water!”

  The slope of the dune was very long and gradual. As they climbed, the tree took on a clearer shape. It had a very well defined and symmetrical crown—like the cap of a mushroom.

  Ohbo declared, “That’s a dragon blood tree.”

  “Dragon?” Jamal asked.

  Sygne nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard of those. It’s a cultural name. Obviously not scientific.”

  Ohbo added helpfully, “It bleeds red blood.”

  Sygne corrected, “Red sap.”

  “A dragon blood tree is supposed to bring good luck.” Ohbo swallowed. “But that one looks… It looks dead.”

  Sygne had to agree. She couldn’t see any leaves on the tree, and even from a distance, its bark seemed bluish gray and unnaturally dark. Had it been petrified? She and Jamal exchanged wary glances. Did that mean that they would find no water here?

  Sygne asked Ohbo to head the camels toward a series of breaks in the sand. Something solid was creating an obstruction in the slope of the dune.

  “They’re just rocks,” Jamal said.

  Sygne asked, “Don’t they look too straight to you?”

  Ohbo observed, “They almost look manmade.”

  “Wait!” Jamal yanked at the horn of Daphne’s saddle. “Halt. Make this thing stop!”

  “What’s wrong?” Sygne asked.

  “Those are graves!”

  Ohbo gasped, “Tallasmanak!”

  Sygne wrinkled her nose. “It looks like a few stone vaults. If they’re graves, their only big enough for one body each. That’s hardly a City of the Dead.”

  Jamal shook his head. “Graves in the middle of the desert. That creepy dead tree. I don’t like this. And…” He sniffed the air. “And does anyone else smell smoke?”

  Ohbo’s face had gone gray. “We should turn back.”

  Sygne cooed to Chloe and coaxed her to sit. “No. We should investigate. We can’t waste an opportunity to replenish our water supply.”

  Jamal and Ohbo both stared at her, their jaws clenched tight. She asked them, “Who’s brave enough to go with m
e?” She stared back at the men and waited. She didn’t think she’d have to wait long…

  “Fine,” Jamal growled. “I’ll go with you.”

  A few minutes later they were approaching the stones. Ohbo and his camels were dwindling in the distance behind them. Jamal suddenly stopped short.

  “You see?” he said. “They are graves. Nothing useful there. We should head back.”

  “I smell the smoke you mentioned. It’s much stronger here.” Sygne stepped closer to the coffin vaults. “Some cultures will burn oil or votives at a communal gravesite. An eternal flame.” She glanced around the empty sands. “But there’s no one here…”

  “The dead are here.” Jamal was becoming agitated.

  Sygne said, “I can’t believe the fearsome Demon of Uhl-Arath is afraid of a few squared-off stones.”

  “The dead deserve respect. Do you want to barge into their eternal peace like a common grave robber?”

  Sygne knelt in the shadow of the nearest sepulcher. It was made of crude slabs of stone, and decorated with relief carvings that had been badly eroded by sand and wind. Here and there Sygne could make out motifs and symbols that might have been part of an ancient iconographic alphabet.

  “These are amazing! If we have time later, I’ll have to do some rubbings.” Sygne patted her pocketbook. “I think I can spare some paper and charcoal for a special occasion like this.”

  Jamal was aghast. “No grave robbing, but grave rubbing? I’m not sure that’s better.”

  “Be serious, Jamal! These are fascinating. I don’t recognize the style at all…” Sygne ran her palm across the porous stone. Suddenly she stopped and quickly pulled her hand away. “Oh no.”

  “What is it?” Jamal leaped forward, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  Together they stared at one swirl of the eroded carving. The shape of it was barely there, but it was still discernible to anyone who had been in the basalt caverns under Krit. The spiral shape was a rough-hewn relief of a Nautilus shell, with a tangle of stylized tentacles emerging from its widest end.

  Jamal asked, “Who would create an aquatic carving out here in the middle of the desert?”