Lords of the Black Sands

by J. Edward Neill

  He hated his work.

  He hated himself.

  But most of all, he hated that soon he would accept his father’s pardon and spend his next centuries alone.

  Undying.

  But not alive.

  The betrayer of all that was human.

  With a rag, he washed himself. The cold water ran in thin ropes from his skin, gathering on the floor before tumbling down the recycling drain. Afterward, he slid into fresh black raiment, sipped from a decanter of stale wine, and chewed a hunk of bricklike bread. He hadn’t slept in days, and was considering lying down on his cot when the black panel affixed to the wall flickered to life.

  The panel hadn’t ever turned on during his days aboard Volkan’s ship.

  He knew what it meant.

  There, in the half-light of a vast, dark chamber, he saw his father’s shadow seated atop a throne. The Pharaoh’s robes were copper, pooled around his feet like liquid metal. Slanting light from someplace high above made lines across his robe, but revealed no sign of his face.

  The Pharaoh spoke.

  Nothing on the screen moved.

  “Volkan tells me you are finished.” The voice shook the screen.

  Eadunn knelt and looked away from the screen.

  “Twelve-hundred and two sites,” he said to his father. “Your list is complete, and many beyond. The other ships…they’ll rejoin us shortly. It’s done.”

  He heard his father’s subtle snort. Countless times, he’d heard it, and yet this time it bothered him more than ever.

  He hadn’t spoken to his father in a decade.

  …and the first thing he does is remind me of his scorn.

  “No. Not done,” said the Pharaoh. “There is one final task.”

  “Shouldn’t you tell Volkan?” Eadunn dared. “He is master of this expedition, no? Or is this to be my forgiveness, and tonight the moment you call me son again?”

  His father’s robes moved. The copper pooled at his feet rippled like disturbed water.

  “Your emotions…ever so fickle,” boomed the Pharaoh. “Do you need my forgiveness? Or will it be good enough that I grant you a seat beside me until the end of the world?”

  Eadunn cupped his chin beneath his palm. To his father’s indifference, he had nothing to say.

  “I’ve told Volkan everything,” said the Pharaoh. “And now I’m telling you. Your ships are being recalled not because your task is done, but because something greater needs your attention. There will be a battle. All of my soldiers will fight it.”

  Eadunn lowered his hand and looked up to the screen. In the shadows, he swore he glimpsed his father’s chin, a pale shape hovering in the black space beneath the copper hood.

  “Battle? What battle?”

  The Pharaoh folded his arms.

  And with a voice powerful and condescending, he explained.

  First, he spoke of Saeed, and of the armies of Persi, Tabuk, Arabi, and Hindi, which had joined at last for a grand rebellion against the Pyramid. The Habiru tribes of the far north and east had made a truce, ending years of conflict to rally behind Saeed’s banner. The Pharaoh called out many of the tribes by name and location, and Eadunn noted that he and the Black Fleet had been called upon to attack none of them.

  “Better to strike them all together,” the Pharaoh explained. “We have but one warhead remaining. We won’t use this final weapon unless we must. We will fight this battle in the old way.”

  For the next hour, Eadunn listened. He spoke none save to ask questions, which his father gave only the vaguest replies.

  By the end, he realized what his father was saying.

  “Win this final battle. Defeat the armies of all our enemies combined. Come home to Thessia.

  “Be at peace forever.”

  * * *

  The hulking warship tore a ragged hole in the night.

  A few of Volkan’s men lurked in the cockpit, murmuring of things to come as the clouds swept past. All the others dozed in their cabins. Eadunn imagined the entire crew was exhausted, hungry, and sick. He expected to see little of them until the ship landed in the refueling fields east of the Pyramid.

  Alone, long after Volkan had retired to his cabin and the others had dropped off into their cabins, Eadunn descended to the ship’s lowest halls. Down in the cold metal corridors, the lights in the floor were as pale as stars, and the thrum of the engines powerful enough to drown out all other noises. He’d long ago gotten used to the ship’s sounds. Having lived inside the flying metal hulk longer than in his own chambers within the Pyramid, he felt somehow at home in the hallways webbed with pipes, in the rooms only inches higher than his head, and with the permanent sense of the world vibrating.

  His plan to sleep had failed.

  He’d listened to his father talk for many hours, and afterward the Pharaoh’s schemes had continued echoing inside his head. The breadth of his father’s preparations staggered him. How one man, even at seven-hundred years old, could plot his enemies’ destruction with such utter forethought was beyond Eadunn’s reckoning.

  He thought of everything.

  But then, what kind of life is his…that he sits on his throne and dreams such precise endings for everyone on the planet?

  Why hope to live forever with such a burden?

  These and many more questions, he dreamed of as he walked. The engines’ roar faded to a remote place in his mind, while the tragedy of his own life came clear into view.

  He hadn’t set out to become a murderer.

  He’d never desired to be the face of the world’s fear.

  He’d only wanted to please his father, to earn his immortality.

  And now look at me.

  He descended a short metal stairwell into the ship’s lowest deck. Down in the dark, he walked toward a final corridor’s dead-end. Just a few feet below his boots, the empty night sky stretched into forever. He imagined the clouds racing, the heavens torn to pieces by the ship’s wings.

  And he wondered what it would feel like to fall.

  He stopped before the corridor ended. Gazing at a lantern swaying from the wall beside a door, he lost himself in the pallid light. He meant to linger in the shadows for a while, to contemplate what he would become after he stepped down from being the Nemesis.

  But something struck him odd.

  Why is the lantern swaying?

  Why is the door open?

  He carried no weapons. His armor hung in pieces from iron rings inside his cabin. Wearing only his loose black raiment, he pulled the door open and peered into the gloom cobwebbing the space beyond.

  The room housed a ship’s engine, one of six. The engine’s heat washed over him, and the sounds of the great turbine pumping bounded through the door and into the hallway. Within a few breaths, he felt his forehead beading with sweat.

  Even then, even half-deafened, he felt something out of place. A clatter, a dropped tool, and the scuff of cloth across a grated floor—he picked the sounds out amid the engine’s thunder. And when his eyes adjusted, he stepped three paces deep into the room and saw the young man crouching beside the great machine.

  Hanzo.

  Hanzo was dressed in dark clothes. Tools were spilled at his feet, and a small box sat empty in his hands.

  Paralyzed with fear, Hanzo gaped up at Eadunn. The young knight’s face was slick with sweat, his cheek lashed with a single line of grease.

  Eadunn stood tall above him.

  “You’re no engineer,” he boomed. “This is no hour for tinkering with the engines. Explain yourself.”

  Hanzo blinked, but said nothing. He placed the empty box on the floor, clambered to his feet, and shivered like a wintered leaf in Eadunn’s shadow.

  Eadunn read the boy’s face.

  Drank deep of his fear.

  Reached through his five centuries of experience to divine what the boy had been doing.

  “Will you speak?” he asked Hanzo.

  “Do it.” The young knight shuddered. “Just kill
me.”

  “Show me your hands.” Eadunn was calm, but still his voice thundered above the turbine’s roar.

  Hanzo stuck out his palms. No grease stained his fingers, only sweat. He hadn’t been working on the engine, but he had been in the room for longer than a moment.

  Closer, Eadunn looked.

  Down here, in the haunted light of a few lanterns, Hanzo’s face looked gaunt. Eadunn hadn’t noticed it before, but the young man had a weak jaw, a pallid complexion, and beneath his black hair, the first hint of blonde color.

  “You dyed your hair.” Eadunn stared without expression. “You’re not Persi. Nor Arabi. You’re from much farther north—across the narrow sea—from Europa, where Habiru tribes reign.”

  Hanzo gulped.

  Eadunn continued.

  “We don’t pick knights from Europa because they don’t speak our language.” His words made Hanzo shrink. “But you…you speak Persi well. Someone’s trained you. Who was it, I wonder? Was it Saeed?”

  Hanzo didn’t need to answer. The truth swam in the circles beneath his eyes, in the defeat of his sagging shoulders.

  “You’re no knight,” said Eadunn. “I knew it when you came to me at the crater’s edge. You’ve taken the oath, but you didn’t mean a word of it. You’d like to see me dead, wouldn’t you? You slipped through the net somehow. We’re so desperate for new soldiers, so busy sending them off to die, we haven’t noticed the world is running short of brave young fools.”

  Hanzo gulped again. A blob of sweat, or perhaps a tear, tumbled from his chin.

  And then, Eadunn did something he did not understand.

  “Go,” he said to Hanzo. “Leave your tools here. When we land, come to me. I will tell you what is next.”

  Hanzo gazed at him, eyes wet with terror. He seemed frozen in place, as if a viper had bitten his hand and the poison had made his muscles rigid.

  “I said go.” Eadunn glowered. “To your cabin. Do not tell anyone I found you here. Do not leave your cabin until we land. Do not look Volkan in the eyes, or he will know.”

  Unfrozen, but still shaking, Hanzo slid past Eadunn and out into the hallway beyond the engine room. When the sound of the young boy’s footsteps vanished, Eadunn knelt beside the turbine.

  He knew what he’d find before he found it.

  A square device, wedged in the small dark space beneath the turbine and the grated floor.

  Clamped in place with a single length of bent steel.

  A radio receiver stuck to its side.

  Wires jutting from its bottom.

  A bomb, Eadunn knew. He’d seen them before in some of the more advanced Habiru camps. The bandits and rebels fashioned simple radio receivers, stuck them together with old world explosives, and used them to waylay unsuspecting enemies. Eadunn hadn’t encountered one in well over a century—the advanced tribes had all been wiped out.

  But this device, he knew.

  Hanzo had plotted to destroy Volkan’s warship.

  Eadunn searched the pile of tools scattered on the floor. Among them, he found what the engineers called ‘snippers.’ He pried the bomb loose from its resting place, and with three clean cuts, he used the snippers to sever the wires strung between the crude radio receiver and the hard-packed explosives.

  For a long while afterward, he stood with the dead bomb in his hands.

  At first, he couldn’t grasp why he hadn’t slain Hanzo.

  If one bomb exists—he thought.

  If one boy is so brave—

  In the dark, eyes shut, ears deaf to the turbine’s roar, he lingered.

  And he understood what must happen.

  29

  The sun blossomed in the east.

  Thessia staggered atop a dune and wept at the sight.

  The red fireball rose up before her, and she sank to her knees, grateful to be alive beneath its glorious light. Suddenly, the sand sticking to her eyelashes, the pain in her bones, and her utter exhaustion didn’t matter.

  She’d walked forty miles in one night.

  She’d evaded the Pharaoh’s guards, stolen a grey shawl from a caravan, and slogged across countless dunes beneath the stars.

  Alive.

  She was alive.

  With the sun in her eyes and her bare feet burning, she descended another mountain of sand. The realm beneath her seemed an ethereal thing, a mirage of stone, glass, and heat, but she knew it was real.

  The Black Fleet’s airfield was no hallucination.

  Tugging her shawl close, she shambled across the flat sands between the last dune and the dark buildings before her. The stones of the huge hangars were black, she saw, and the giant glass shields surrounding the airfield on all sides were thrice as tall as any human. The whole place was stark, apparently uninhabited. Either the Black Fleet’s ships were neatly tucked away inside the hangars, or they were still out in the world, still destroying endless lives.

  She walked at first.

  And then ran.

  At a breach in the glass walls, she collapsed in the shallow sand and crawled across the threshold. Hot dry desert became cool dark pavement. On the wide path between two giant black hangars, she sat for many minutes. She needed water, food, and for the fires burning beneath her thousand scars to die.

  She might have lingered in the shade until dusk, teetering on consciousness’ edge.

  But a man emerged from a door in one of the hangars.

  He seemed a spirit at first, the shape of him wavering in Thessia’s tired eyes. He soon came into focus. He was young and healthy-looking, his dark hair sweeping in a long braid behind his back. At first she feared he was one of the Pharaoh’s knights. But he wore no armor and carried only a short knife at his belt.

  And he made no move to kill her.

  He knelt before her, wary at first, and then worried.

  “You are lost?” he asked.

  She swallowed the dryness in her throat and rasped. “Water, please. I’m here to see the ships. Are they here?”

  “You’re a citizen of the Pyramid village?” he queried. “You are not to be here—you know this. This is the Lord’s territory. How did you come to be here?”

  She nearly swooned, but steadied herself by clutching his arm.

  “Please…water.” She leaned close to him. “I’ll tell you everything…just…water.”

  He left her sitting on the dark stones. Into the great black hangar, he vanished, and she could only hope he would return.

  With water.

  And patience.

  The sun rose up higher before her. It was a sight she hadn’t expected to see again. In the dank abyss beneath the Pyramid, in Azid’s cellar, she’d forgotten the sun. She’d assumed her life would end in the dark. Her body full of poisons. Her eyes plucked from her head. A last cold slip of steel between her ribs.

  But no. She’d survived.

  Dawn, the most beautiful she’d ever seen, washed over her. The chill she’d gathered while marching at night evaporated, and the new day’s warmth thawed her bones.

  She knew she should’ve died.

  She’d no right to exist, she believed.

  But the great red sun bloomed in the pale blue backdrop, and with it she felt hope enough to survive at least one more hour.

  The man returned. She hadn’t heard him come back from the hangar, but there he was, kneeling before her with a steel cup full of water.

  A cup. She considered as she drank.

  A simple, perfect little thing.

  But a machine, by the Pharaoh’s decree.

  Enough of a threat to kill the world.

  “Now,” said the man, watching as she drank, “you will tell me who you are. No one wanders here by accident. No one knows the way but the Lord’s men. You will explain yourself.”

  She breathed deep, set the cup down on the black pavement, and looked the man in his golden eyes.

  A choice lay before her:

  Tell him everything, take the chance he knew her name and her status in
the Pharaoh’s eyes—

  Or tell him nothing, feign ignorance, and risk—

  What, exactly?

  Will he kill me? He doesn’t look like a killer.

  But maybe…more knights are waiting inside?

  Does it matter?

  No. It doesn’t.

  She told him.

  Not everything, of course, but a shadow of the truth.

  She began by telling him her name and how she’d been plucked from her Nile village many years ago. She explained how she’d come to be Eadunn Varwarden’s chosen concubine, how he’d left her at the Pyramid while away at war, and her reason for having marched through the night to deliver a dire message.

  “The Prey…the Pharaoh’s most hated…he’s coming to the Pyramid. He and his army.” She summoned all her courage to tell the lie.

  He looked at her as though she’d just told him the world was ending.

  “It’s true,” she said. “I was kidnapped…a rebel spy named Azid. He drugged me with scarab venom and brought me into the desert. Look at me. See these scars? He held me captive for many weeks, beating me, interrogating me. But I escaped him, and I came here. It was the first place I thought to look for Eadunn. I know where the Prey’s attack will come. Is Eadunn here? I must see him.”

  Lies.

  All lies.

  The rebel attack was to be upon Alexandria, she believed. She’d seen it in Babar’s letter. ‘Alexandria in winter,’ it had said, and she supposed it made perfect sense. If Eadunn had ever trusted her, perhaps she could look him in his eyes and make him believe her.

  Perhaps her lie could mean the rebels’ salvation.

  The Pharaoh’s destruction.

  And her own redemption.

  The man listened, never once interrupting. She knew by the look in his eyes, he felt something resembling sympathy.

  Compassion.

  Belief in her words.

  Mother taught me well.

  “How do you know these things?” he asked.

  She allowed him to help her to her feet. With a belly full of water, she felt stronger.

  “Azid, he wrote letters to other spies.” She feigned a spell of dizziness. “There was one…his name was…Babar. And others, too. I saw what Azid wrote. The Prey and Saeed…they’re attacking Alexandria, and they’re doing it soon. Before winter grows deep.”