9 Tales From Elsewhere 6

by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

  The youth gazed down at Fadiyah's loose harem silks. He licked his lips. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but no-one can pass.'

  Already doubt was tinging his voice. Fadiyah swayed around him, her hands flickering to the beat of her footfalls.

  'Please,' she whispered. 'Just me.'

  'I... yes.' The guard set aside his spear, unbarred the smaller gate and held it open for her. He was smiling, his gaze lost in the distance. 'Yes.'

  Guilt wormed its way through Fadiyah's mind as she stepped past him. He was an innocent, too young to have played a part in the Sultan's early atrocities, too human to be part of those works now. When they pursued her, and she knew they would, they would find him like this. He would be punished. He might be killed. But he had made his choice, and the people whose blood stained the streets, whose bones had been ground to build these strong walls, who lay in pain in the Sultan's dungeons, they had no choices.

  Fadiyah would change that.

  She stepped past him, out into the desert and the rising dawn.

  When Fadiyah first heard her pursuer she thought it might not be real. The clicking drifted across the sands, faint as the chirping of insects. She had grown up in the desert, she knew its dangers, the tricks your mind could play when you were alone and thirsty in the noonday sun. The ghostly stream over the next rise. The voices of friends long dead. The palaces that rose in splendor just before a man fell flat and gave in to death.

  For a moment the thought crossed her mind that this could be an illusion, as much from hope as from doubt. But the self-deception didn’t last. A cloud of sand rose a mile behind her, kicked up by the jittery progress of metal feet.

  Fadiyah kept moving, heading east towards the bandit oasis and the hope of shelter. But her pursuer moved faster than her, and its swift approach made a fight unavoidable.

  She found a place at the top of a dune, with a wide expanse of soft sand beneath her and the sun to her back. She put the box away in a silk pouch, adjusted her coin belt, and prepared herself, running through the steps of the dance in her head. She knew it by instinct, knew her body would follow the old familiar shapes her mother had taught her. But any dance was about planning and care as well as instinct, and this was a dance she could not afford to get wrong.

  Her pursuer appeared over the opposite dune, the sun gleaming off its carapace, six metal legs jerking up and down. It slid and scurried down the long slope, a brass beetle the size of a horse, bladed antennae flashing out before it.

  Fadiyah clapped her hands, once, twice, again, beating out a rhythm. Slow at first but growing faster as she moved her feet, the sand flowing between her toes. It was a weak rhythm, just the tapping of her own flesh, no drum to drive her on, no drummer to lend her their power. But it was a beat, and it was all she had.

  The beetle reached the base of the dune, scurrying across flat sand. She could see the twinkle of emeralds in its eyes, see the blades scythe back and forth as it rushed towards her, a hard, heartless machine of death.

  She felt the rhythm pulse through her, flowing up her arms, across her chest and down through her belly, a rush of pleasure and power woven together to make a spell that ran down to the desert floor, like a snake sliding into the world. It was the sand dance, and every grain felt it.

  The beetle had reached her dune, its progress slowing as it scrambled uphill. But it kept coming, grinding implacably onwards, the light reflecting blindingly bright off its shell.

  Fadiyah raised her hands, clapped harder, stamped her feet, the rhythm growing faster and more furious, her heart pounding in dread at the spinning swords that rushed towards her. She swept low and the sands moved around her, flowing with her movements. A wave of golden grains rose in front of her and rushed down the slope, smashing against the beetle, breaking against its metal body.

  She swept round again and another wave flowed out, higher, stronger. This time, the machine raised its forward legs and rode up the front of the wave, leaping off its crest to land ten feet from Fadiyah, limbs waving as it regained its footing.

  For a third time she swept low, her whole body swaying in a long, graceful arc that broke on the beat, throwing all the energy she had into one final wave. The beetle reached out for her with its razor arms, a blade flashed inches from her face.

  But the desert lifted the machine up, flinging it through the air and smashing it to the ground. Something cracked as it landed, gears grinding horribly as they jolted out of place. The machine lay on its back, legs flailing without rhythm or reason, its shell buckled and cracked.

  With a few last steps, and a final tapping of her hands, Fadiyah buried the beast.

  By late afternoon, Fadiyah was deep in the desert, where only bandits roamed. She licked cracked lips, wishing she had brought another water skin. The one she had was small and empty. Her flight from the palace had been hurried, long anticipated but little prepared, and the fight with the beetle had left her tired, slowing her progress to the next oasis.

  The sand here was flat, an open space across which spiders scurried. There would be wide-eared foxes and startled mice after dark, but for now there was only her and the spiders.

  Up ahead, she could see a cluster of trees. An oasis.

  By the time she reached the oasis the sun was brushing the horizon, turning the world a glorious orange. Fadiyah knelt in the long shadows of the palms, mud caking her silks as she scooped up handfuls of water and greedily gulped them down. It tasted like dirt and the grit clung to her teeth, but it was the most delicious thing she had drunk in weeks.

  Her thirst was so great that at first she did not notice the sound, the clicking and rattling and hiss of sliding sand. She looked up in alarm, to see a pair of arms rising out of the sand. Another pair were emerging behind her and a third over to the left, stubby limbs that ended in shovels and squat bodies heaving themselves up from the desert.

  She rose, backed away, found herself pressed up against a tree, the rough bark pressing against her skin. Short, ugly things with three stubby legs and faces on their silvery bellies, the machines hunted her with an unsteady gait.

  Fadiyah glanced around, quickly judging her surroundings. The sand here would be no good against these creations. It was firm, packed, and there were no sloping dunes to use to her advantage. She knew no dances for trees or pools. Perhaps there was some distant paradise, a place of endless rains and green to every horizon, where a dancer might learn to master the plants and waters. But a desert dancer learned desert dances, of sand and skies and small fires, of camels and carpets and blades in the dark. So those were the things that she must use.

  She pulled two knives from her belt. They were small and barely sharpened, knives for cutting food, all she had been able to stow away while in the palace. Only guards and cooks carried real blades in the Sultan's home, and the cooks only in the kitchen.

  She stamped her feet, beating out the start of a rhythm against the packed dirt between the tree's roots. Her feet became the cadence, brutal, abrupt, without nuance or delicacy. A fighting rhythm. The dance of blades.

  Keeping her steps to the beat, she emerged from beneath the tree, approaching the nearest machine. It raised its arms, settled back on its rear leg, a warrior ready to strike. Her footsteps grew faster as she jumped and twirled towards it, each movement flinging the rhythm through her body, out towards her hands, flashing through her fingers and tingling down the blades. They glittered in the dusk and grew, ghost blades spreading from their tips, sharper, stronger, fiercer than these tools of peasants and serving parasites. They arced around her as she spun and leapt, rushing towards the machine. Sweeping out to the left, she tried to dance out past its reach. But the machine moved too, with a speed that belied its bulk, twisting from one leg to the next. It reached to block her escape, while the others closed in from behind.

  Fadiyah flung herself into the air and down, dodging a strike by that crude iron arm as her blades sang across its surface. Sparks flew and the air filled with the bitter taste of metal
, but all she left were shallow scratches across its shell. It swung again and she somersaulted away, flicking out the knives, this time leaving a deep gouge on the shovel hand. But the machine pressed on unperturbed, lumbering towards her, limbs jerking and swinging. One caught her foot as she flipped back, and for a moment the rhythm was lost, the beat broken, the dance without power. She jerked away in panic, almost ran into the arms of the next machine. Even as she ducked beneath its cold embrace her feet were finding the pattern again, the beat hammering in her heart. But it was too weak. She hadn't the power to stop these machines, and even if she had the energy to flee she would soon falter, while they would keep pressing on, unbroken by exhaustion or the endless miles of sand.

  In desperation she danced towards one, fended off its attack with her ghostly blades, leapt up and slid across its top, the tips of her knives running long scars down the seamless steel. But even as she landed on the sand beyond, it turned, its inner workings untouched, and knocked her flying into the pool.

  She staggered upright, wet clothes clinging to her, slowing the flow of her movements. There was no solid ground beneath her feet, only mud and the squirming of grubs within it. There was no rhythm to be found in the muck. The glow of her blades flickered and faded. The machines closed in.

  And then it came. A cry from across the desert, the beat of a distant drum, rushing to meet her. She closed her eyes and felt the rhythm, letting it lift her heart and her feet. The sluggish, ensnaring mud seemed to vanish, her limbs flowing to the cadence of a master drummer. Though distant it was strong and clear, a rhythm to lift the soul.

  She swirled and spun through the water, up onto the bank, her knives now scimitars forged from dawn's light as the new rhythm powered her dance. Leaping and twirling, vaulting over the nearest machine, never missing a beat as her feet hit the floor behind. Spinning, her blades glowed like white hot flame as they hissed through steel. Gears tumbled onto the sands, springs uncoiled like snakes, and the machine froze. She rolled forward beneath its arm, rose up in front of the next one, sliced out its forelegs, left it to roll uselessly into the water. Its gears churned and gurgled as its arms twitched to a halt.

  As the last one lumbered towards her she paused, arms raised, letting the rhythm rise, letting the power of the drum build to a crescendo. Then she pirouetted forward and sliced the brute in half.

  The drummer's name was Hamed, and he had been sent from the bedouin camp to meet her. Fadiyah remembered him from before she had left the encampment. He had still been a youth then, twelve or thirteen, just growing into his gangling limbs. Now he was a man, with a rhythm to match his beauty, who looked on her in adoration with his big, soulful eyes. The heroic dancer, returning to the camp after so long suffering the city. It made her uncomfortable, but it made her proud as well.

  Everyone in the camp wanted to see what Fadiyah had returned with. They crowded around as Hamed led her out of the desert, past lines of tents and braying camels to the elders sitting around the fire pit. Sparks flew into the dusk, and the scent of roasting goat made Fadiyah's mouth water.

  People jostled and jabbered around her, wanting to know what had been gained from her years locked away in the Sultan's palace, waiting at his tables, sweeping his floors, dancing for his guests. Fadiyah herself had often wondered whether this would be worth the cost. Long years working for a man she could not stand, worming her way closer to him, dodging the wandering hands of his lackeys as she slid into the inner sanctum of palace life. When she had left she was still of marrying age. Now she was past thirty, her youth spent on a goal that had seemed always out of reach, a distant, shimmering mirage.

  But as she opened the small wooden box, watching the faces of those around her shift from hope to uncertainty and on to elation, it was all worthwhile.

  She lifted out a key and held it above her head, where it glinted in the firelight, another star twinkling against the void of night. The gem at its base sent red-gold shimmers across the sands.

  'The master key,' she announced. 'To the Palace of Gears and the winding hearts of the Sultan's polished slaves.'

  A cheer rose around the fire. Many of these people had seen the key as it hung glittering from the Sultan's neck, in the days before they escaped the city. The symbol of their pain and oppression.

  Fadiyah looked to her left, where Hamed was beating applause out on his drum. Others' reactions were more muted.

  'This is good,' her brother Ishbal said, gesturing for quiet. 'But is it enough to risk our lives on?'

  While the young men had grown bolder, he had grown more cautious. He looked at her across the fire, and there was love in his eyes, but Fadiyah saw fear as well. You could not live among jackals without sensing the scents that drew them.

  'The Sultan's soldiers come for us more and more,' Ishbal continued. 'Last moon they captured Isaac at the Well of Rye. Two moons back they chased us from our tents. My heart spills over with joy at Fadiyah's return, but we should not risk everything on some reckless act.'

  Some around the fire grew silent. The older ones nodded, grey beards bobbing.

  'You talk of struggle,' Fadiyah said. 'But if we do not act then we will struggle forever. Isn't it worth the risk to return to our homes, to comfort and trade and a life where we are not hunted?'

  'Not all of us lived that life.' Aaliyah, a woman of forty years with a long scar down her face, glared through the flames. 'I was a bandit even before the Sultan's machines came. I have lived in the desert all my life. Why should I return to a city?'

  'You do not have to,' Fadiyah said. 'But will you spend your whole life being hunted, or will you fight back?'

  Aaliyah nodded, accepting Fadiyah's words, but many others still frowned.

  'You have lived with danger for so long,' Ishbal said, 'Perhaps you have forgotten what there is to lose. Rest for a moon, then we will talk of action.'

  'Perhaps you are right.' Fadiyah pressed down her anger. To have struggled this long, only to have to argue with the one man who should be on her side. 'But perhaps not. The Sultan has had little time to respond. Perhaps it would be better to act swiftly.'

  She looked around. She was losing them. She had imagined this day so many times, coming back to lead them to glory. It had never occurred to her that it could end like this. It made her want to scream.

  'Perhaps,' her brother said. 'But it is always best to sleep on a perhaps. To think about the -'

  'Enough!' Young Hamed rose to his feet, glaring at Ishbal. There was a fierce beauty to his face in the firelight, a man's rough anger in his voice. 'All of you, listen. My whole life, I have listened to my elders whine about their oppression, and dream hollow dreams of freedom. Now we have a chance to seize those dreams. The talk should not be of whether we strike, it should be of how. I will not wait until I am old as Aaliyah before I see the city. Will you?'

  Around the fire, young people rose to their feet, shouting and cheering and beating their drums, drawing their elders into a wild, exuberant dance. Hamed smiled at Fadiyah and she smiled back. He was so young. Too young, she thought. But her heart beat to the rhythm of his drum, and later that night, as the stars shifted through the sky, they danced the dance of passion.

  Fadiyah rose slowly from sleep, letting her mind lift from a soft darkness into Hamed's warm embrace. She curled protectively around him, brushed a curl of hair across his forehead as he started to stir. She could happily lie like this forever.

  But not until the Sultan was done.

  She reached out, found the hard edge of the key among the clothes scattered around the tent. Today they would plan how to enter the city, how to break the machines and hurl the Sultan from his throne. Tomorrow night they would strike, as fast and furious as the sandstorm, the desert people taking back what was theirs. The thought made her heart race with fear and excitement.

  Hamed's lips brushed softly against her skin. She shuddered with pleasure. It had been a long time since she had taken a lover, someone she wanted, not someone she
needed to take her closer to the Sultan's treasures. She pressed her lips against Hamed's, ran a finger down his spine, listened to the rising rhythm of his heart.

  But another sound caught her attention, ripping her from her private world.

  A scream.

  She bolted upright, even as another cry ripped through the camp. There were shouts of panic and anger, and behind them a terrible rattling. She flung a sheet around her and rushed into the dawn light.

  People were darting back and forth, grabbing armor and blades as they ran to fight, or snatching up their children as they rushed for shelter. But there was no safe place to run. From every side the Sultan's mechanical beasts were closing in, sunlight glinting from carapace and pincers alike. Fadiyah watched in horror as old Aaliyah was sliced in half, her sword tumbling dented and useless from her grasp.

  Even before she could ask, Hamed had his drum out, fingers beating against the skins, a hard, angry rhythm, sharp beats for the clash of arms. Fadiyah swallowed her fear and let the cadence take her, the sheet flowing behind her as she spun across the sand. She took deep breaths, tasting the dry air, feeling it blow across her skin. She made that her dance, the dance of the wind, the rush of the sky itself coming to save her people. Her arms flew wide, taking in the whole of the air, the vast blue gazing down upon them from horizon to horizon, the wind that grew with her every step, rising from a breeze to a gale to a sandstorm.

  The bedouin flung themselves to the ground, hands curled protectively over their heads as the raging desert scoured their skin and flung their homes about. A mechanical beetle rolled sideways and slammed into another, with a clang and crunch of gears. Smaller, lighter machines were lifted off their feet and flung into the dunes, weapons flailing uselessly.

  Fadiyah felt the fury of the storm, felt her kinsmen's fear. The sandstorm was as dangerous as the machines, for it could strip a woman down to her bones. She had to control it, to tame the rhythm and bend its menace to her will. With each step of her dance the wind grew stronger, tighter, more focused, blowing past her friends and scattering her enemies. The beating of Hamed's drum rose through her, gave her power, gave her strength. It was the pounding of her heart. It was the blood flowing in her veins. It was the power that moved her soul that sheltered her friends and buried her foes. It was her all.