Lords of the Black Sands

by J. Edward Neill

  Galen shot a dark look at the trailing villagers. Subtly, he slid his fingers inside his sleeve and clutched the longest of his bone daggers.

  “No,” he said to Anik. “Bring them out.”

  Anik looked more fearful than ever. The villagers cowered in the shadows, clinging to the stones of the other huts as though the rocks could shield them if Galen’s mood turned black.

  A trap? Galen wondered.

  …would explain their fear.

  Anik disappeared inside the hut.

  Galen heard his voice and another’s.

  And he suspected, before the night was over, he’d have to bury his bone dagger in someone’s heart.

  21

  When the golden-skinned man shambled out of the stone hut, Galen was prepared to kill him.

  The short, skinny man let loose a casual yawn, and Galen’s fingers opened and closed around the bone dagger hidden inside his cloak. In the dark, no one saw the weapon, but the truth glittered in his eyes.

  Yawn again, he thought of the stranger. I dare you.

  Unlike the villagers, the golden-skinned man recognized the darkness within Galen. His yawn broke, and he stopped just outside the hut’s entrance, eyes wide and full of wordless shock.

  “You needed me?” Galen said calmly.

  The golden-skinned man gulped hard. Galen could tell he was someone of importance, someone trusted with some great and perilous task. But this night, in shadows deep enough to swallow all courage, the diminutive man was all fear, no fury.

  “It’s fine. I won’t kill you,” said Galen. “That is, if you’re honest. Tell me your name. Tell me who sent you. But first…tell the men hiding in the hut behind me to put away their clubs and shackles. Do they think I’m blind?”

  The golden-skinned man nodded. In the Persi language, which the villagers didn’t know, but which Galen knew better than any in the world, the man spoke to his hidden fellows.

  “He sees you. All of you. It’s Him. The real Him. Do nothing. We’re going to talk now.”

  “Good.” Galen nodded. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be so feared. He rather liked the sensation. “Now tell me your name.”

  “Rameses,” said the man. “Son of—”

  “I don’t care who your father was.” Galen crossed his arms. “Everyone’s always trying to tell me, but it doesn’t matter. Your fathers are dead. Tell me who you are. Tell me who sent you.”

  Rameses’ face paled from gold to faintly yellow. In the half-light of the villagers’ faraway fires, he swallowed hard. “You’re needed, Lord.” His eyes were downcast. “There’s to be a war. My king, he begs your service.”

  Everything about Rameses offended Galen.

  Everything except one thing. When Galen heard the term ‘Lord’ he couldn’t help but grin.

  “King?” he scoffed. “You say you have a king other than Menkaur? So long as the Pharaoh lives, none of us have any other king than Him.”

  Behind him, Galen heard Rameses’ men move. There were four, hiding in the gloom inside a shadowed stone hut. He wanted nothing more than to kill them and leave Rameses screaming in the rocks, but he breathed deep and stood his ground.

  Patience, he told himself.

  This is an opportunity.

  “You speak truly, yes,” said Rameses. “The Pharaoh is everyone’s king. But we would not prefer it so. The world and everyone in it knows that for any war to be won, Menkaur must perish. And as the Nemesis will not do it, we must turn to another. To you.”

  Momentarily, Galen’s thoughts wandered. He remembered something Elia had said: ‘The world wants it to be you,’ she had told him. ‘Your mother believed it, as do all of us who’ve followed you.’

  The thought made him smile, though not for Elly.

  “And your master is—?” He stared Rameses down.

  “Saeed. My master is Saeed.” Some of Rameses’ color returned. “He desires—”

  “Say no more,” Galen interrupted.

  “Lord?”

  “You came here to find me. A thousand miles, likely more,” said Galen. “I won’t ask how you knew where to find me. I don’t care. But I’m not going to hear Saeed’s plan from you. I’ll hear it from him, from your king.”

  A light glimmered to life in Rameses’ eyes. “Does this mean you’ll follow? You’ll come with me to—?”

  “You came here to capture me. You think I don’t know?” Galen licked his teeth. “I smell the iron in your shackles. I hear your men shuffling in the dark. You’re a liar, Rameses. And a coward. You and I will go alone to your master.”

  Rameses dared a glance over Galen’s shoulder, peering into the darkness within the hut.

  I see.

  You have dual orders, Rameses.

  Bring me in dead or captured…earn the Pharaoh’s favor.

  Or…

  Convince me to join your sad crusade...attempt this little war…and have me remove the Pharaoh.

  …so Saeed can be Lord.

  No other would have known what Galen read in Rameses’ eyes. Five-hundred years of existence had taught him to deduce what mortals could not.

  He sensed the movement at his back. Hesitant footsteps, they were, sandals scuffing atop dusty stones. The villagers, finally aware, fell away into the shadows. Perhaps they’d known all along. Perhaps they’d lied to Anik.

  Stupid boy, thought Galen. You’ve brought me to a slaughter.

  In the space between breaths, he contemplated:

  Did he need to kill Rameses’ men? Was the blood worth the effort he’d spend in spilling it? Was there no other way?

  Or had Rameses delivered him an opportunity too perfect to deny?

  Any longer, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps his immortality had faded enough to cloud his judgment, or perhaps the same impatience he’d allowed himself in Japas was more a part of his soul than he wanted.

  In the end, he couldn’t help himself.

  His companion was violence.

  The leather curtain behind him fluttered in more than the night’s breeze. Galen spun away from Rameses, his cloak blurring the night, and propelled himself through the leather sheaf. Inside were four men holding clubs made of petrified wood. One of the men, a brute twice the size of the others, held a set of iron shackles in his fat, sweating fingers.

  It was dark inside.

  The men hadn’t expected him.

  He smiled and set about his grisly work.

  The brute stood up from a stone chair, but Galen sat him right back down by driving a bone dagger through the bottom of his jaw and up into his brain. The brute’s tailbone cracked when he hit the rock, but the big man never felt a thing.

  Dead before he knew it.

  The others shouted and swarmed him with their clubs. In the hut’s dark, close quarters, he soaked up several blows to his arms and shoulders. The pain slowed him none at all. Savoring it, he loosed the longest of the bone daggers from his cloak. He whisked the crude weapon across the throat of one man and buried it in the forehead of another. Both men collapsed on the floor, their clubs still dangling between their loose, dead fingers.

  Within five seconds, he’d killed three of four. The fourth raised his club only to drop it and whimper for mercy. Galen kicked him square in the chest, driving him through the leather curtain and out into the night. The man hit the ground with such force, Galen imagined half his ribs must’ve snapped.

  Smiling from his pain, tasting a dollop of blood on his tongue, Galen strode into the dark and stood over the fourth man. Rameses spat and cursed, and Galen planted his sandaled foot on the fourth man’s neck.

  “Stop,” Rameses screamed. “Stop, you fool. Why? You killed them—oh God, why?”

  Galen made the fourth man twist beneath his sandal. Wearing no expression, he waited for Rameses to stop shrieking. Somewhere in the shadows, the villagers looked on. The only one who looked surprised was Anik.

  They didn’t tell him.

  “Kneel,” he said to Rameses.
/>   The little man gaped. He looked ready to run.

  “Kneel, and your man lives,” said Galen. “He’ll spend his days here with these…people. It’s not a good life, but—”

  “You’re mad,” cried Rameses. “My brother was in there. Sarison, oh God, what has this monster done to you?”

  Rameses moved as if to enter the hut behind Galen. Galen drew out another length of bone, whiter than the moon, sharp as any sword, and Rameses stopped.

  “Kneel,” he said one final time. “I won’t ask again. You came here with lies. Now kneel and spill the truth. Else you’ll join your brother.”

  Eyes wet with tears, hands shaking, Rameses lowered himself to the dirt. The man beneath Galen’s boot shuddered, and Galen almost slew him.

  But instead, he lifted his boot and kicked the fallen man aside.

  “Stop weeping,” he said to Rameses. “Your brother…you’ll be with him again, and in a far better world than this. But first, you’re going to take me to Saeed. I don’t know this king of yours, but the only true thing you’ve said to me is that he’s planning a war against the Pharaoh. And that, my friend, is the first good news I’ve heard in ages.”

  “Please…my brother…please,” wept Rameses.

  “First, swear.” Galen waved the bone blade. “Swear you’ll take me to Saeed. And swear you’ll attempt no vengeance for your brother. It was your doing, after all. Sarison would be alive if not for your deceit.”

  Rameses, tortured and sobbing, groveled in the dirt. Galen pitied him none. He wondered how many wives Rameses had widowed, how many in the service of his master the little golden-skinned man had betrayed.

  And he knew the number to be great.

  “I…swear it.” Rameses’ face was golden no more, but flushed and drowning in tears. “I’ll take you. Please…my brother. Let me see him.”

  Galen wagged the bone blade and walked into the night.

  He remembered Elly again, and he wondered if she’d suffered so greatly before she died.

  * * *

  Atop a bed of stones, in a valley not far south of the village, Galen sat and watched the sun rise.

  He’d slept none the previous night. Black clouds had rolled in, rain had fallen, and the chilling autumn wind had swept over all things.

  Galen had never moved, not once.

  He’d thought of the lives he’d taken and the suffering he’d caused.

  He’d rubbed the back of his neck, needing to touch the skin-port again and again.

  The rain had dappled his face, his furs, and his greying beard, but he felt nothing.

  I can’t, he told himself as the sorrowful dawn shed its corpse-light atop the hills.

  I feel nothing.

  He’d decided well before sunrise if Rameses broke his oath and failed to arrive, he wouldn’t hunt the little man down. The way to Persi was long and treacherous, but he knew it well enough. Alone, he could circumvent the mountains, avoid the desert, and descend into the river delta in the west. The settlements there would be numerous, assuming the Pharaoh hadn’t used his new warships to annihilate them.

  First, the valleys.

  Then, the ocean shore.

  This Saeed King, he’ll be there.

  The sun climbed unwillingly into the morning sky. The light burnished the clouds in many shades of copper, while the stones and earth remained cold and grey. When the wind bit him for the ten-thousandth time, Galen reckoned even if there was no Saeed and even if abandoning his stone hut led to no glory, he’d be grateful to leave the rocks behind and string out his life in someplace far less blighted.

  He sat up on his rocks.

  To his surprise, he saw Rameses approaching.

  The little man, hobbled by grief, walked a rutted path between the stony hills. He carried a satchel over his shoulder, and his back was bent. Galen saw his filthy hands and knew Rameses had buried his brother in the dark.

  He supposed he should feel sympathy. After all, he hadn’t killed Sarison out of cruelty or malice. He’d done what he believed needed doing.

  And I did it quickly.

  But he felt nothing for the little man. Nor did he move to help Rameses carry his heavy satchel. The world was full of death and suffering, and to say Galen was cynical came not nearly close enough to what he had become. He was the void into which all emotion collapsed. Of the four who’d been immortal, his heart had always been darkest.

  Rameses stopped short of Galen’s rocks.

  Galen looked just once at him, and knew the little man was broken.

  Not angry. Not vengeful.

  Just cracked down to his core.

  “A long way to walk,” he said as he slid down from his rocks. “We’re going west?”

  Rameses nodded.

  “We’ll stick close to the hills, avoid the open desert. Find a river and follow it.”

  Again, Rameses slightly bobbed his head.

  “Lead,” Galen told him.

  And so Rameses did.

  22

  She wept.

  But no one cared.

  In a black chamber far below the Pyramid’s heart, Thessia hung by her wrists from iron chains. Her pain was unthinkable. She saw precious little in the near-total dark, but she knew her arms, belly, and legs were caked with blood, some of it still wet, most of it many days old.

  From above, water dripped atop her head. If she raised her chin just a little, she could catch a stream of dank liquid in her mouth and drink.

  …for all the good a few drops did her.

  The worst feeling came from below. Days ago, she’d been able to feel the floor beneath her toes, but now everything below her knees had gone numb. Sometimes when she closed her eyes she worried her absence of sensation meant they’d already cut off her legs.

  It didn’t matter, she supposed.

  I’m not leaving here alive.

  There were others down in the vast dark space. Other chains. Other human shapes dangling in the void. But she’d given up talking to them long ago. Most were dead, she knew by the smell. Some were already skeletal, their grey bones visible only when her captors brought light into the dark. And one…just one was surely alive. His chains were far from hers, perhaps a hundred yards away in the cavernous room.

  All he did was howl.

  It’s the only thing he can do.

  He’ll be dead soon, like me.

  How many days had she spent in the dark? She couldn’t say. They’d come for her the morning after she’d slipped the letter to Keshiaa, and after dropping a sack atop her head they’d carried her through endless corridors. The chains had hurt her so badly she’d screamed. But in time, in some ghastly way, her body had adapted, and now she was limp, numb, and ready to die.

  For many hours, days, and perhaps weeks, she’d expected the Pharaoh’s men to kill her. They never did. She anticipated questions, interrogations, or for some meaning to the pain they inflicted upon her to be revealed.

  But no questions came. The masked men with their shock-wires, their pincers tipped with beetle poisons, and their lead-weighted whips never asked her a thing. She’d begun to believe they were deaf and mute. They never spoke. They never reacted to her screams. And in her estimation, they took no pleasure in their work.

  And so, when the faraway door opened and the cold white lights invaded the void, she sucked in a hundred ragged breaths and prepared for the worst again. The weals on her back had just begun to scar over, and the pinpoint spots where they’d injected her with beetle poisons had burst. Her pains had turned almost dull.

  But now…

  There were four men today, not the usual three. She couldn’t see their faces—the door by which they entered was impossibly far away. As they came, their lanterns illuminated chains, corpses, and dangling bones.

  How many people have betrayed Him? she wondered. There could be thousands down here.

  Thousands of dead.

  At first, she hoped the four men would march straight for the howling man. Their
lights had already awakened him, and he began his daily cries, which echoed forever in the great empty space.

  But no. They came for her.

  Their lights glittered on the black floor, its surface wet to the end of sights. Just as she’d done a hundred times before, she looked up to find the ceiling, and saw nothing. The darkness stretched into places her eyes couldn’t see.

  Or perhaps I’ve begun to go blind, and this is the afterlife closing in.

  She wasn’t blind. Her three usual tormentors, she saw in the flesh. Two were fat and pale, their veiny skin seeming dead in their lanterns’ glow. One looked as thin as the skeletons whose bones he’d strutted past. Tucked under his skinny arm, he carried a box.

  A black box.

  Filled with instruments of pain.

  She felt naked before them. And it was almost true. What remained of her clothing hung from her body in scraps. She’d been wearing a white shirt and long, flowing silk pants when they’d come for her. All that remained now was in tatters, blood-stained and reeking of urine.

  She no longer cared.

  Masked the same as the Nemesis’ knights, her three tormentors approached. The fourth man hung back, tall and ominous. It was he who worried her most. Something in the way he stood in the shadows, arms crossed and long robes pooling wraithlike on the floor, filled her with a fear she’d never before felt.

  “Is it to be whips today?” she murmured to the skinniest of her three tormentors. He knelt at her feet, his black case open on the floor. “You know I can’t feel the sting anymore. You’ve hit me so much…I’ve no skin left.”

  The skeletal man showed no reaction. He plucked a few sharp steel instruments from his box and stood up.

  In his hand, she saw her most hated tool.

  The pincers.

  The pointy ends are wet.

  Scorpion oil…

  Her sweat began to roll down her forehead, between her breasts, and along her belly. She controlled her breathing as best she could, but she knew they saw her fear. Their lanterns gleamed on her skin, and though she’d always been bronze, her terror had turned her ghostly white.