Lords of the Black Sands

by J. Edward Neill

  He heard and saw everything.

  And then he was on her.

  From behind, an instant after she knelt above his sack of potatoes, he tore her off her feet and hurled her into the mud. Then he was atop her, his knee in her throat, his dagger above her eye. She reached for her own blade, but he swatted it into the night. She gasped for breath, and he allowed her only one.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” he said using the tongue of the common folk.

  She gurgled, her pretty eyes wide and staring at the knife poised just above her cheek.

  “Let’s try that again,” he said in a sharper, more precise language. If she were one of the Nemesis’ soldiers, she would understand.

  “Pleasure. To. Meet. You,” he growled.

  “Hrrngg, grgggghnnng…” she managed.

  He lifted his knee, but only a little. She swallowed a desperate gulp of air. He told himself he’d kill her if she kept squirming.

  “You have ten seconds to explain,” he said in the harsh, sharp language. “Better make it good.”

  The first five seconds, she spent gasping for as much air as he allowed her.

  And then…

  “I’m alone,” she sputtered. “I’m not after your food…or your life. Please…your knee…I can’t—”

  I guess another ten seconds won’t hurt.

  He lifted his knee off her throat. His dagger never moved away from her eye.

  “You speak my enemy’s language,” he said. “And you speak it well.”

  “As do you.” She stared at the dagger.

  “You’re not from this place.” His eyes darkened—and he felt her fear rise in the night. “Not even close. You’ve never lived in these hills. Your teeth are too shiny. Your breath doesn’t reek of piss-water. The starlight says your skin is clean. You have explaining to do.”

  “The pellets…” she stammered. “They’re in my cloak. I’ve only got two left.”

  Pellets, he thought. Iodine…to purify the water.

  The only place she could’ve gotten those—

  “East,” she said, her breaths rasping. “I’ve hunted—I mean followed you from the east. From the steel cities, the rust lakes. You found the doctor’s name. You went to Cedartown. I trailed you.”

  His dark eyes narrowed. She knew too much. He wanted to end her life, but something inside him made his muscles uncoil.

  “You trailed me a thousand miles and I didn’t see you?” He traced a circle in the air above her eye with his dagger.

  “Yes,” she exhaled. “You’ve been distracted. The Nemesis…he’s been after you.”

  “I’ve given you more than ten seconds.” He frowned. “Where is he? Is he about to drop a bomb? Swoop in with fifty knights? I hope for his sake it’s the bomb. Fifty won’t be enough.”

  If she’d been pale before, her face was well and truly white now. Her fear made a ghost of her skin, and her eyes were wet with the makings of tears.

  “I’m not with the Nemesis,” she said.

  He smirked. “How did I know you were going to say that?”

  “Galen…no.” The way she said his name loosened his grip of the dagger. “I’m not here to hurt you. It’s…just…your mother sent me.”

  “What did you say?” He raised his dagger high.

  “Please…” She shut her eyes. “…your mother.”

  5

  The girl, whose name he’d pried out at the tip of his sword, knelt in the dirt and trembled.

  Her name was Elia, or so she’d said. She claimed she’d followed him since the ocean, since the rusted towers and stone graveyards a thousand miles east of Cedartown.

  But he didn’t believe her.

  “My mother—she’s been dead for five-hundred years.” He glared.

  His dagger, he’d stuck back into his belt.

  His sword, naked in the night, rested in his hand.

  Elia closed her eyes. He’d ripped her hood partly off, and the starlight shined on half her face. “It’s true.” She shivered. “In a manner of speaking. Will you hear me? Or will you kill me? My mother told me to expect both.”

  His knuckles turned white against his sword’s handle. If Elia were an agent of the Nemesis—

  …then I should’ve killed her already.

  But what if her words were truth?

  What if?

  “Speak,” he said. “If what you say displeases me, I’ll nip your head from your shoulders. Don’t worry. It won’t hurt.”

  She nodded

  “I’m just one…one of many.” She blinked back her tears. “Every daughter before me has looked out for you. Protected you. Done things you don’t know to keep you safe. But I…I couldn’t watch anymore. I know you’re after something. Your time…it’s coming.”

  For centuries, Galen had known the best methods of tearing the truth out of people. The way humans talked…the way their eyes moved when they lied…he could read the signs the same as prehistoric men had read the stars.

  He wanted to believe Elia was lying.

  But in her voice, he heard only truth.

  “It’s not hard, you know,” he said, “to kill a person. If you’ve watched me, then you know. You’ve seen. To survive, a man must do terrible things. And after a while, the things don’t seem so terrible. Killing becomes easy—like brushing dirt from your sleeve.”

  Elia lowered her head. If she’d been sent to kill him, he reckoned someone had made a mistake in choosing her.

  “My mother and twenty before her.” Her voice was only a whisper.

  “Generations?” He wagged his sword near her face.

  “We’re sworn.” She nodded. “To you. To only you.”

  “Don’t you think I’d have noticed? Hundreds of years? Don’t you think I’d have caught one of you before tonight?”

  She shook her head. “You’re always running from Him. You look for the storm, never the lone cloud. And I’m the only one who’s come this close to you. I wasn’t supposed to. But I had to.”

  “You expect me to believe you?” He smirked.

  “No. You’re no man of faith. You survive, and you search.”

  “I do more than search. I find.”

  “I know.” She nodded. “The maps. The plans. The doctor in Cedartown.”

  Galen siphoned a breath between his lips. His black blade, only inches above Elia’s head, quavered for an instant.

  She knows things.

  Too many things.

  Is this how the Nemesis finishes me?

  Or is this real?

  “Questions.” He lowered the sword to his side. “I have questions.”

  She looked up to him. Even in the dark, he saw her pale face flush, her eyes big as moons.

  “In the east, on the city-island whose towers are crumbling, you say you watched me,” he said. “If so, what did I do there?”

  She swallowed hard. If her next words were lies, he’d kill her.

  And she knows it.

  “You…” she stammered, “…you were hiding. It was hard to find you—even harder to follow you without you seeing me. But I had a tool for seeing far—bi-nocles, my mother called them. I could only use them at night, else the Nemesis would find me.”

  “So it was you who summoned him?” His fingers stiffened around his sword-handle. “You and your little trinket. The Nemesis can see you at night, don’t you know? Any machine, any device…doesn’t matter how small. I know I didn’t bring any machines to the city-island. I’m not that stupid.”

  Elia lowered her head in shame. Either her emotions were real, or she was a fine, fine performer.

  “There was a tower bigger than the rest.” She gazed into the dark. “You went inside. There were other people hiding inside. I don’t know how they survived on the island—there’s almost no food. But you went in and came out with—”

  “What?” He loomed above her. “What did I come out with?”

  “Paper.” She breathed. “Curled-up paper. It was late, almost nightfall. I do
n’t know what else they gave you.”

  “Gave me?” He let out a grim laugh. “They didn’t give me anything. I took it.”

  “Oh…”

  Once, then once again, he circled her. The night was absolute now, and even with his perfect vision he had trouble reading her face.

  She’s right about the tower.

  It used to be a hospital—hundreds of years ago.

  And in its basement…

  “Was it you who told the Nemesis I was going to Cedartown?” He stood behind her, black as night in his ragged cloak. “Men were waiting for me. They couldn’t have known unless someone sent a warning.”

  Her gaze never moved off the ground.

  “It wasn’t me. I swear,” she said. “After you left with the papers and hid in the crater, the Nemesis came. He didn’t find…he couldn’t find you. But he found the tower. And when his men came out, they carried bodies of dead men. Six bodies…there were six.”

  She’s right.

  Six men in the basement.

  I should’ve killed them.

  “What was it?” Elia asked.

  “What was what?”

  “The papers. The things you took. Were they maps? To lead you to the doctor?”

  Unconsciously, he touched the skin-port on the back of his neck. It had healed faster than the doctor had promised. But it was still there, smooth and metallic, a tiny cylinder drilled straight into his spine.

  “I already knew about the doctor,” he muttered.

  Just needed him to drill in the right spot.

  Elia raised her chin and looked over her shoulder. She didn’t know he’d slid his sword back into its scabbard. She didn’t know he’d decided to wait before destroying her.

  “Are you going to kill me?” Her question was soft, almost resigned.

  “What was your mother’s name?” he said.

  “Liliath. She was—”

  “What did she tell you about me?” he interrupted. “If you claim your family has followed me…even helped me…over many generations, she must’ve known all about me. So…what did she tell you?”

  As he loomed behind her, and as clouds covered the starless, moonless night, Elia told her story.

  Of her mother, Liliath.

  Of her grandmother, Mashere.

  Of the time her family had lived on a mountainside, watching over him while he spent a decade at peace in a long-dead forest.

  Of the time they’d laid a trap to counter a raid by the Nemesis in a far-northern fishing village.

  …during which Mashere had been killed.

  She spoke of the cities through which they’d followed him. The ways they’d tracked him without using technology. Of the dozens of sisters, wives, and daughters they’d lost to disease, illness, and to the Nemesis himself.

  “My family is dead,” Elia said at the end. “One sister before she came of age. Another to water sickness on her first mission to find you. And my mother, she—”

  “Most of my years, most of my life…” Galen cut her off. “I’ve lived in places without names. Five decades in the northern wilderness, where the trees still sometimes grow. Eighty years in the mountains across the sea, with swordsmen, priests, and rotten rice paddies. On ships for more months than I can count. Out there on the ocean, just my books and I…back when books were a thing that still existed.

  “…and you—you’re telling me your family has followed me the entire time?”

  Elia faced him on her knees. He knew what she was doing. She was letting him see her face.

  So I know she speaks the truth.

  “You’ve had us as lovers,” she said. “And some of us even loved you. In the mountains, while you studied swords, we married other men in the village…just to be near you. On the ocean, we were scullery maids, suffering below decks, watching your cabin doors so no one slit your throat in the night. We lost you many times, but we always found you. We were the only ones looking.”

  “Not the only ones.” He glanced skyward. “He’s out there right now.”

  In the dark, she dared to rise. He could’ve killed her then—it would’ve been easy. Something in his sword-hand itched, and he reached for his blade.

  But thought better of murder.

  “Your mother.” She looked at him in the dark. “She started this. She made us swear to watch over you. She gave my family everything we could’ve ever wanted…if only we’d do this one thing.”

  He tried to think of something to say.

  Something cruel.

  Something to knock the girl off her high and moral tower.

  But for once in his life, he held his tongue.

  * * *

  Fingers of grey light crept across the early sky. Atop a bed of dry mud, with weeds and stones surrounding him, Galen sat utterly still.

  Elia was waking.

  She was beautiful, he remembered as if by accident. Her torn hood and ragged cloak notwithstanding, she’d done well to track him a thousand miles and survive intact. Her dark, loosely-braided hair sank down into her shirt, and her eyes, beneath dawn’s first shadows, were huge, expressive things.

  He’d watched her sleep during the night, of course. He knew better than to trust her, she who’d stumbled into his camp, she who had so many stories. Whether her tales of centuries-old oaths and journeys across the Kingdom of Earth were true or manufactured by the Nemesis, he had yet to decide.

  Killing her was still an option.

  But letting her live felt somehow wiser.

  She stood without saying anything and walked to the nearby stream. After dipping her waterskin below the surface and filling it to its brim, she pulled an iodine pellet from one of the many pouches on her waist and dropped it in.

  He smirked at the sight.

  What’s it like, he wondered, to fear death from a drop of water?

  “How old are you?” he asked her when she returned and sat across from him.

  “Twenty-six.” She sipped from her waterskin.

  “How old were you when they first told you you’d spend your life following me?”

  “I don’t remember.” She looked a little sad. “My grandmother…if I close my eyes, I can hear her voice. But I was just a child when my training began.”

  He made a face.

  How long can she keep this up?

  “I’m not lying,” she said. She’d seen his smirks. “I saw you in the fishing village the day the Nemesis attacked. You were wearing a cloak like you are now, but it was grey instead of black. You had a sword, but it was shorter and…less perfect. You didn’t even blink when you walked past my grandmother’s body. It was like we didn’t exist in your world. That was almost a year ago.”

  His smirk became a frown. He remembered the fishing village, too. Far north of the city-island in which he’d found the skin-port schematics, he’d come to stay on the ocean, on a tiny peninsula with a harbor only big enough for a handful of boats.

  He’d meant to stay several months.

  But he’d made the mistake of trading a weapon he’d stolen for a bundle of food and a map to the south.

  And two men had used the weapon just hours afterward to settle a score with their neighbors.

  “Fools,” he grumbled. “It was their fault your grandmother died. I told them, just as I tell everyone—never take a machine beneath the open sky. No one listens. They just don’t get it. There are no machines anymore—there can’t be. Why do they think I’m so willing to trade away weapons for strings of fish and fistfuls of rotten vegetables?”

  Elia understood, or seemed to. She looked sad again.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It was grandmother’s time. She’d reached the age of slowing us down.”

  The sun crawled over the horizon. The grey morning turned silver, and then softened to hazy blue. With Elia’s coming, the rains had departed. The sky was almost as pretty as she was.

  Galen stood up in the dry mud, lowered his hood, and faced westward.

  “I’m leavi
ng,” he said. “I suppose, seeing as we’re old, old friends, I won’t kill you.”

  Elia scrambled to her feet. Her things: her waterskin, a leather bag stuffed with fruit, and her gloves still lay scattered on the ground.

  “You’re going?” She called after him. “Just like that?”

  Already twenty steps down the gulley between hills, he glanced over his shoulder.

  “I’ve got things to do. It’s like you said. My time—it’s coming.”

  He left her standing there, wide-eyed and hurt. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked sad when watching him go. Most times, people were happy to see him off.

  I scare them.

  A few minutes of me is more than enough.

  He reached the gulley’s end and gazed out into the dawn. The hills fell flat in the distance, and his old friend awaited him.

  Sand.

  Endless sand.

  He wasn’t more than a few hundred steps out into the scrubland between the hills and the black-powdered plains when he stopped walking. He heard the soft patter of Elia’s boots far behind.

  Stupid girl.

  She thinks she’s going to follow me.

  Breathless, she caught up to him. She looked different in the daylight. Her paleness had fled, and her face, bronzed by countless days away from cover, gave her away as a woman whose ancestry wasn’t so different from his own.

  She’s from the across the ocean.

  Could my mother really have known her family?

  “Why are you here, Elia?” he said her name for the first time.

  She smiled and pointed westward. “I’m coming with you. I’m done hiding. We’re going west together.”

  “I travel alone.” He trudged away.

  But she jogged right beside him. With her hood and cloak, she looked not entirely unlike him.

  “It’s my oath. I’m the last of my family,” she said. “You’ll have to kill me if you want me gone.”

  I just might, Elia, he thought. I just might.

  6

  As his ship soared through the infinite night, Eadunn Varwarden knelt in his cabin and gazed into the flat-paneled screen flickering on his wall.