“You want to fight.” Ishidi recognized. “You are thinking if you do, we’ll kill you and ruin the Pharaoh’s desire. This is not true. Resist us, and we’ll drag you up to the cliffs. You’ll still be alive when we take your head.”
Everything inside him rebelled.
If he’d had a sword—any sword—he’d have butchered the Japas colony to its last child. He swore it to himself, and Ishidi saw it. The same darkness that had propelled Galen across the centuries smoldered in his eyes and cast a shadow upon all who watched him.
And yet…
He knew.
The moment he’d let the Nemesis’ blade fall from his fingers, he’d forfeited his destiny.
Why? he wondered.
And for a reason unknown, he thought of Elly.
With sword-tips pressed to his lower back, they made him climb. On the stairs carved into the valley wall, they forced him up, up, up. The river’s roar quieted, and the sunlight glared on his pale, naked skin.
With each step higher, he let his senses go numb.
He saw nothing but stone.
He heard the people’s whispers no more.
He felt no swords, only the wind.
At the top, many hundred yards above the river, the Japas people led him up and over the cliff and into the great clearing beyond. The grass was green here, and the ground littered with statues weathered down to stone hummocks by the centuries. Many more hundreds awaited his arrival—it seemed the Japas colony had turned out in its entirety to watch him die. The vast ring of faces and whispers greeted him, and Ishidi led him to the clearing’s center.
Four statues, faceless and ancient, lay tumbled around him. Among them, a fresh stone block had been laid. Its surface was too clean, he realized.
A chopping block.
They brought it up here just for me.
Seven men held him in place. Ishidi spoke to the crowd, but Galen couldn’t hear it. He was staring skyward. The only thing in the world he knew was the cloudless blue heavens above his head.
And then he understood.
What should’ve been obvious long ago struck him the same as the sunlight against his face.
“You’re dead,” he murmured.
Ishidi, having barely heard, cut short his speech and came to him.
“What does the prisoner say?” the Japas man leaned closer.
“I said…you’re all dead,” Galen repeated.
Ishidi frowned. It was so ugly an expression, Galen imagined it must’ve injured the Japas man to move his muscles so.
“You think the Lord of the Sands brought you out here to watch?” Galen nodded at the sky. “Wrong. He wanted to—”
A sound like the earth breaking cracked the day. Everyone in the Japas crowd dropped low to the ground, men, women, and children crying out in sudden terror. The cliffs, the valley and the trees shook themselves near to breaking. Galen and Ishidi were the only ones left standing.
Ishidi gazed at him with fury in his eyes.
“You knew,” Ishidi spat.
“I guessed.” Galen smirked.
“You did this,” said Ishidi. “You summoned them here. You’re the reason.”
Galen shook his head.
“No. Not this time.”
Three monstrous warships roared into the open space above the clearing. Galen supposed he wasn’t surprised. The Pharaoh had much more than the Nemesis’ lone warship. The Lords of the Sands had newer, better ships, far more powerful than the original.
I might’ve known…
Giant Scimitar discs crackled on each ship’s bottom—eight discs per ship—each huge enough to disintegrate a house. The ships thundered to a stop overhead, and then floated down within killing distance.
Galen braced himself. His senses came back to him, and he became aware of everything. The men holding him had let go of his arms and dropped to the ground. Ishidi screamed something at the sky, tore his blade from its scabbard, and swung for Galen’s neck.
Galen caught the blade between his wrist chains. The giant sword sheared the links apart, and suddenly he was free.
The ships opened fire. They began at the crowd’s edges, spinning in slow circles while the Scimitars did their work. There were no impacts, no craters, no projectiles. The Scimitars’ did their work invisibly, disintegrating people dozens at a time, leaving only clouds of ash and hot, dry air.
Galen shouldered Ishidi to the ground and made a run for the cliff-top. His legs pumped slower than usual, his ankles still bound by manacles and a chain, but the chain was loose enough to allow short, quick strides.
And so he ran like never before.
Through clouds of ash and searing hot wind, he hurled himself, a swift shadow in a field of destruction. The three ships wheeled overhead, closing the circle with short Scimitar bursts.
He saw a woman staring, and moments later her ashes fell into the burning grass.
He saw two little girls hiding beside a fallen statue, and then the black dust of their bodies staining the pale stone.
A few people escaped and fled out of the circle. Driven mad, they fled in no particular direction.
Not Galen.
He knew exactly where to run.
When one Scimitar blackened the earth beside him, he felt his skin crackle and curl. He never broke stride. He sprinted through the ash-storm and reached the cliff’s edge.
He didn’t look back.
The screams were already ending, the hundreds of Japas people reduced to a handful in a matter of seconds.
He was sure he heard Ishidi cry out his name before dying.
And then he leapt over the cliff. The world sped past his eyes, and his chains floated above his limbs, caught with him in free-fall.
The river came rushing up.
He hit the water hard.
Everything went dark.
18
He crawled up from sleep’s abyss.
He opened his eyes to the night.
On a dark shore, under a clouded, quarter-moon sky, Galen crawled back to consciousness. His body was covered in mud, and his hair, stiff with silt, made a wild frame for his face.
When a sliver of moonlight peeked through the clouds, he lifted his right hand. The flesh was still black, and the muscles in his fingers rigid and unwilling to stretch. He felt the heat move inside his skin, and though it was agony, he knew it meant he was healing.
He staggered to his feet. Achingly slow, he wandered naked to the river’s shore and washed the mud from his face. He didn’t bother cleaning the rest of his body. The way he saw it, the mud was the only clothing he had.
How long have I lain down here? he thought.
How far did I fall?
He looked skyward. The cliffs above the valley were buried in shadows, and the river mist sparkling in the fragile moonlight. In another moment, the moon vanished behind an armada of black clouds. Darkness snuffed the starry mist, curtaining everything.
He remembered.
Two of the Lord’s ships had descended into the vale, pursuing the few who’d escaped the initial assault. The door to the underworld, the ships had melted and sealed. The Japas soldiers who’d stood watch, the Scimitars had turned to black dust.
To save himself, Galen had gulped in a vast deep breath, clutched a heavy stone, and sank to the river’s bottom. There, he’d waited for time unknowable. The ships had used their weapons on the water, the rocks, and the shore. The river had boiled above his head, and the heat had worked its way into his every cell.
But he’d stayed at the water’s bottom.
My stone and I.
My only friend.
He held up his hands again. The chain between his manacles was broken, but the iron clasps remained fastened to his wrists. His ankles were still bound, and the metal links clogged with mud. Slow, he would walk.
But alive.
He stared into the night. The ships were gone now, and the telltale scent of their engines vanished. He shut his eyes and breathed the
darkness, and he smelled only water, stone, and the ashes of the dead, which still drifted down into the valley.
He touched the skin-port on his neck.
Intact.
He ran his fingers along the skin on his side, his shoulder, and his cheek.
Crispy. But it’ll heal.
Somehow, he’d survived.
He’d never felt such a thing as joy in his life. But there, standing beside the river while still alive and breathing, the swell inside his chest betrayed volumes of his emotion. As if in worship, he raised his arms and opened his palms to the night.
The Vials…I’ll find them.
Wherever you’ve hidden them, I’ll hunt them down.
His eyes sharpened in the dark. With vision matched by nothing in the world, he wandered and found the stair graven into the cliffs. The stones had been blackened by Scimitar heat, but the way to the valley’s top was intact.
He climbed, and with each step he felt himself striding closer to the Galen he’d always been.
At the cliff’s top, after an arduous climb, he halted. The smells of burnt grass, smoldering trees, and melted stone moved in the wind. The moonlight cut through the clouds again, revealing a field of death. He saw ashes streaking the barren earth, the remnants of Japas’ people etched into the lifeless soil. He glimpsed the trees in the background, the trunks carved to tatters, the logs still smoking where they’d fallen.
The ships…chased down everyone…made sure everyone died.
Yet here I stand.
If ever he’d needed proof of his destiny, surviving the Pharaoh’s ships seemed the final piece of his life’s puzzle. Alone, he stood beneath the clouded heavens. Alone, he existed.
Mine, he thought of everything.
In his suit of mud, he crossed the ruined fields and slunk into the forest. Hundreds of trees lay fallen before him, their bones still curling, crackling, and smoking. He walked past them, as indifferent as the moonlight. Already his body was recovering. He only wished he’d found a Blue Vial. The thought of how quickly he’d heal when full of immortal fluid made his skin crawl with desire.
He’d been so close.
Only not.
He began his trek up the mountainside. Not far above the fields of death, the forest remained intact. No one had survived beyond a few hundred yards. The line of destruction met its sudden end, and the trees stood watchful and silent.
Elly, he thought.
You and I, we’ve a long road ahead.
Remembering Elia made his suffering feel worthwhile. He wondered if she worried for him, if she’d seen the Pharaoh’s warships and assumed him dead.
Smart not to come down here, Elly.
Smarter than I give you credit for.
He marched up through the shadows. Dark boulders watched him pass, and the trees like black towers guarded him against the emerging moonlight. The fire in his flesh blazed hot, and yet the pain seemed remote. What would’ve felled most men, he willed away.
He couldn’t say how long he walked.
Wending through the trees, the wind cold against his skin, he ascended the mountain for what felt like ages.
And still the night lasted.
After a while of walking, the moon broke through the clouds and lit the path before him with white fire. The hour was well after midnight, and the mountainside at its most beautiful. The rocks blazed with the moon’s glow, the trees throwing dark lines across the colorless earth. For a while, Galen imagined himself as the last living man, the sole survivor on the Kingdom of Earth.
Only, he wasn’t alone in his dream.
Elia was there beside him. And for as much as he thought to shake her out of his mind, he imagined her smile, her great moon eyes, and her presence like sunshine on his shoulders.
Somehow, he began to believe her destiny might belong with him, after all.
The Pyramid…
She and I…
Wouldn’t that be something?
The mountain, utterly familiar, yielded to him. He climbed faster and faster, until at last, in the deepest trench of night, he scrambled over a final boulder and looked upon the hidden clearing in which Elia had landed the Nemesis’ ship.
His heart leapt.
And lodged somewhere in his throat.
He scrambled down a smooth, white rock, and gazed into the emptiness where the Nemesis’ ship had been.
He should have known.
The scents he’d caught on the wind hadn’t come from below, but from above.
Staggering, he walked into the clearing’s heart. Shapeless hunks of cold black steel littered the ground. The earth beneath his bare feet was hard and brittle, the soil crackling beneath his soles.
He knew.
Though he didn’t want to.
He wandered to the clearing’s heart. He saw the depressions where the ship’s landing spokes had touched down, the gouges in the dry earth where the ramp had rutted the dirt. Gazing skyward, he saw the forest canopy melted away, the perfect circular pattern of Scimitars etched through the branches and leaves.
For a long while, he stood in a daze. His heart slowed near to a stop. His blood felt like thick oil churning through his veins.
“Elly?” he said her name softly.
No answer.
“Elly,” he called into the night, “come out.”
Nothing moved.
No.
She’s fine.
She’s hiding.
All the generations her family survived…she’s smart enough to have hidden.
She wouldn’t just—
His naked foot caught on something. In the bare, blackened dirt, in a desolate ring graven by a lone Scimitar blast, he knelt.
His fingers, he hooked around the strap to Elly’s canteen.
He tugged the canteen out of the soil.
And watched it crumble to ashes in his hands.
* * *
Waves, cold and dark, swam up to Galen’s knees.
The sun crested atop the mountains behind him, and his shadow stretched into the sea.
How many days had he walked? He could not say.
The mud he’d worn was all but gone, but his hands were still black, his fingers still dark with Elly’s ashes.
He was the only living soul on Japas, and he knew it. What dreams he’d resurrected upon waking beside the river had died in the night. His body had healed, but the fragile light Elia had awakened inside him was as dead as the men and women whose ashes littered Japas’ valleys.
He stood in the rising ocean tide.
For all the sun’s warmth, he felt nothing. The water crashing against his thighs came to him bright and balmy, but fled to the sea colder for having touched him.
What is this life?
No gods. No purpose. No hope.
Our plans become dust. Loveless, we are. Corpses long before we die.
And so shall I be.
A corpse slower than the rest.
But dead nonetheless.
Part 2
Ten Years after Elly’s Death
19
Every time Thessia walked outside the Pyramid, she risked her life.
She risked torture.
Suffering.
Death.
And yet, for the last six-hundred evenings, she’d done so.
The guards allowed it, of course, but only because they didn’t know—and didn’t bother to question—her true purpose in leaving the Pyramid at dusk. Ever since Eadunn’s exile, and as the Pharaoh’s preoccupation with hunting his enemies had intensified, her house-arrest was something to which fewer and fewer paid much mind. As long as she returned before the tribute caravans arrived, and as long as she hid herself inside Eadunn’s chambers when the Lord’s servants sealed the Pyramid shut, no one cared what she did.
Still, she had no illusions.
She was a prisoner.
Swathed in grey robes, her big eyes shining through the tiny slit in her headscarf, she walked the stone paths toward the village
beyond the Pyramid. The hour was twilight, and the village’s low shanties and stout minarets had turned black against the falling sun. The closer she walked, the more she was able to see the village’s cleanness, the red streets swept clear of sand, the windows and walls freshly painted, the gardens fed with water from the Pyramid’s own reserves.
A lie, she knew.
All of it.
For all the village’s apparent perfection, the people therein lived in poverty and fear. The some five-thousand desert folk existed only to unload the trade caravans arriving from the east, to provide a workforce for the Pyramid’s maintenance, and to supply daughters whose only purpose was to service the soldiers, scientists, and personal attendants of the Lord.
Thessia shook her head.
And walked alone to the village.
To the few people who saw her pass, she returned a cold, cold stare. It had always been her way, even before the Nemesis’ knights had destroyed her home and kidnapped her. More than any of her sisters, she had always been fierce.
Subtle, but fierce.
She passed a trio of the Pharaoh’s guards. Striding toward the Pyramid, they glanced just once at her, afterward dismissing her as though she were a few loose grains of sand. They wore black armor, swords, and hosts of other weapons, but their masks were off.
She saw their faces.
And she knew their names.
New, all three of them.
The Lord…he’s using up his soldiers faster than ever.
It was true. Ever since the escalation of the war against Saeed, the Habiru, and other, lesser tribes, the Pharaoh’s reserves had thinned. Men who’d once flocked to the Nemesis’ banner had lost their hero to ten years of exile at his father’s hand. And even a world as cruel as the Kingdom of Earth had a limit to the number of hateful, murderous men it could spawn.
His newest soldiers…almost as cruel as the old ones.
But only half as smart.
And lacking in malevolence.
A gust of wind picked up and moved against her in the dark. Her grey robes fluttered. The sand made tiny whirlwinds at her feet. She managed a smile, the rarest of all sights. Here, at least, the sands weren’t black. One of few places in the world untouched by the Pharaoh’s bombs, the lands surrounding the great dark Pyramid were unspoiled.
Lords of the Black Sands Page 15
