The Sea of Time - eARC

by P. C. Hodgell

  “Bet you only the sledges make it,” said Timmon. “We’re down to just over one hundred travelers already.”

  They began to pass ruins, jutting out of the sand. Jame remembered that these worn walls were said to travel about beneath the sand, according to the wind. Some presented markets with bread that turned to dust at the touch. Others offered fruits and vegetables that looked whole but crumbled if breathed upon. The dust raised figures to wander about the stalls, in and out of sight. This must once have been a fertile realm, but its inhabitants had long since fled. Lizards watched the caravan go by from the stubs of walls, frilled collars flaring red, gold, and blue in the wind.

  “Lesser rhi-sar,” said one of the Kendar. “Useful, but nothing compared to their ancestors.”

  That night Jame walked among the tents to stretch her legs after a day of riding. Most traders had settled in the lee of dunes with a haze of sand whistling off the crests over them, but not so close as to be in danger of avalanches. The dunes, after all, were always in subtle motion, and drummed as they shifted slowly forward under the wind’s whip. A storm was building. The lambas’ tufted tails sparked and crackled with electricity. Moas crouched down, hiding their heads under their rudimentary wings. Neither stars nor moon shone, and in the distance thunder rumbled.

  She came to a fire leaping high into the troubled night. Around it sat Kothifirans, listening to an old desert woman. Like her sisters in Sashwar, she wore a veil, but made no attempt to anchor it as the rising wind whipped it about her wizened face. When she saw Jame, she broke off her current story and gestured to her with a gap-toothed grin.

  “Welcome, my friend, you who seek the truth! Sit with us and I will tell you of the desert gods.”

  The others readily made way. Jame sank cross-legged onto the ribbed sand and gazed across the dancing campfire at her ragged hostess.

  “Once everything for days in all directions belonged to the Sea of Time. Ah, consider how much of the present floats atop the past. When the Sea died, or seemed to, so did its attendants and all that lived in it. But something that large and powerful never completely goes away. Desert sledge still calls to the memory of water, as you have learned, have you not?”

  Most of the carters murmured agreement. Those without sledges looked glum.

  “Beneath the Sea is Stone. Stone remembers and endures. He seldom speaks but always tells the truth, because silence is never a lie. If you can get his attention, you will learn much. Take care, however, that you can bear the force of the answer.”

  Someone offered her a goatskin of wine. She paused to drink, wrinkled throat bobbing. The fire flared sideways in a gust of wind, then leaped up straight again.

  “On top of Stone creeps Dune. The cry of the jackal and the laugh of the hyena, the singing sand, the crash of ghostly wave on vanished shores and the rasp of Sandstorm are its voice. Dune reveals with one hand and covers with the other. It may lure you to your doom or tell you truths. Dune knows, but says both no and yes.

  “And then there is Salt, the Eternal, the Spiritless, the Soulless. When the Sea died, that which could not be purified became Salt. It is a mystery even to the other Gods. It is not Earth or Air or Fire or Water. It is not That-Which-Creates or Preserves or Destroys—yes, girl, I know the attributes of your god and of the Four. The Gods of which I speak came after them but may well outlast them. Hah’rum! Salt is That-Which-Remains, the Sea Within us. That is why to this day salt merchants smuggle their wares throughout Rathillien and take their time at it. They know Salt will remain even if King Krothen will or won’t.

  “Where Stone is honest and Dune equivocates, Mirage always lies and lies without purpose. If you are not careful, Mirage can kill you or steal your soul. She is a dancer and a shapeshifter. Do I worship Mirage? Certainly not! My lies carry truths that fact’s spindly legs cannot.

  “Ah, but Sandstorm is the raging place of wind and Dune. It is destruction, but it is not always bad. It clears away and scours clean. Sometimes it buries things which should not walk on the Earth. And it smashes through Mirage’s illusions in an instant.”

  Jame stirred. Had she thought before of That-Which-Destroys as a positive force? Well, yes, in her more defiant moments. “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be,” Kirien had once said. Always? Sometimes Jame wondered.

  The old woman went on to describe River, Oasis, and their child, the Pathless Tracker, who spoke to Stone and knew the rites to propitiate Sandstorm.

  “When we die,” she added, “he leads us across the Desert and through the Sea into the Story of Things That Were. You would not have gotten this far if your guides were not his initiates. You Kennies don’t have to believe in Tracker, but you show him good manners if you know what’s best for you.”

  “And who are you?” Jame asked.

  “Me?” The old woman laughed and showed her few remaining teeth. The lower half of her face seemed to have become more skeletal as the night progressed, giving her a skull’s lopsided, bony grin. “I am Storyteller, Granny Sit-by-the-Fire. Every hearth and every campfire is my shrine. I tell truth you’ll remember, even if I have to lie to do it. Without me to tell you what you are, you would just be clever animals, no better than that overgrown wombat lying there farting by the sledge.”

  Her listeners laughed, but laughter died suddenly. Something dark stumbled toward them out of the night, whimpering. In a moment, they had scattered, and the old woman withdrew into shadows, leaving the memory of bones.

  Jame thought at first that the advancing figure was a wounded animal, but then she recognized one of the drivers who had whistled at Mint. The man dragged a leg and cried as he lurched forward. Damson walked behind him, cold-eyed.

  “I was on guard duty,” she told Jame. “He said his friends might like a pretty face, but he preferred ’em plump and wanted to be friends. Then he grabbed me.”

  “You have the training to deal with him without this.”

  “Oh, I did that first. He’s got a broken leg, when he has time to notice.”

  “Damson, let him go.”

  The cadet grimaced and did. The man collapsed.

  By now people were gathering, including Jame’s ten-command.

  “You should have broken his neck,” said Dar, furious. He and Damson might play tricks on each other all day long, but they were teammates and this was an outsider.

  A wagon master approached, throwing on his clothes. “What’s all this?”

  “She led me on!” cried the man, groveling away from Damson. “She’s a witch!”

  He collapsed again and writhed at the girl’s feet, frothing at the mouth.

  “Stop that!” Jame grabbed Damson to shake her…

  …and found herself abruptly in the soulscape, grappling with something dark and dire. Ivory armor slid over her limbs, shielding her. She lashed out.

  …and Damson sprawled at her feet in the sand with a split lip.

  “I said if you ever struck me, I would strike you back,” Jame said, shaken. “I couldn’t help it.”

  Damson spat blood. “Neither could I.”

  “They’re both witches!” cried the driver, beginning to wax hysterical.

  “Now what?” demanded the wagon master, distracted, as another man ran up to clutch his arm.

  “It’s Nevin,” the newcomer panted. “Seized from his tent…through the floor…”

  The master turned pale. “Gods help us. We’ve landed in a nest of snatchers. Everybody, get up! We have to move camp. Now.”

  “A nest of what?” said Dar blankly. “Oh…”

  Something green and scaly had emerged from the sand. It fumbled at his boot, gripped it with ten-inch claws, and pulled. Dar sank in up to his thigh.

  “Help!”

  Some of his friends grabbed him while others dug frantically. Finding his foot and the thing clutching it was no problem, but the sinewy arm, or neck, or whatever it was seemed to go down forever. Mint hacked through it. Dark blood spurted out of the hole, dre
nching Dar.

  “Argh!” he said, trying to wipe the sticky goop off his face. “It burns!”

  “Strike the tents!” the wagon master was shouting. “Move, move, move!”

  One of the moas gave a squawk suddenly cut off, leaving only a puff of feathers afloat and the half-seen afterimage of a claw as broad across the palm as a man’s torso.

  Everywhere tents were falling and people scrambling to load their wagons. The wind was stronger now and the visibility diminished except where lit with cracks of lightning. Blue light ran hissing over the wagon frames and up the oxen’s horns, crowning them like violet candle flames.

  “’Ware the return stoke!” someone shouted.

  As if his voice had called it forth, lightning seared down, striking dead the unfortunate oxen where they stood.

  Jame was helping bundle Ean’s rolled tent into his sledge when they heard a child scream. Where was Byrne? She and Ean scrambled up the nearest dune. From its crest they saw an enormous, scaly claw on a neck or arm shimmering with blue-violet fire, thrust up through the sand. The boy dangled from its fingertips, curled up like a kitten in its mother’s jaws. Beneath, in a depression, smaller claws groped up like nestlings about to be fed by their parent.

  A stocky figure stood at the base of the soaring arm and chopped at it with a sword as if with an axe.

  The thing convulsed and dropped its captive. Jame took a running leap, caught the boy just above the groping claws, and rolled with him to safety.

  Lightning clove the air, followed by a thunderous clap like the end of the world. The snatcher’s stump of an arm (or neck) flailed, fountaining black blood in a stench of burnt flesh, then whipped back into the sand, followed by its offspring.

  “Whee!” said Byrne, somewhat breathlessly as his father snatched him up.

  Jame confronted the swordsman. “Gorbel, what are you doing here?”

  “What?”

  They were both shouting, still partially deafened by the blast.

  “I said…”

  “I heard you.”

  The Caineron Lordan leaned on his reeking blade, his face scrunched up against the sweat running down it. “Had to come, didn’t I?” he said, raising his voice to a near bellow against the ringing in his ears and the howl of the wind. “Father insisted that I discover the mystery of the Wastes, so I bribed a trader to take me along incognito. The idiot insisted on a team of hyenas, which promptly ate him. So here I am, in the desert, on foot.”

  “You’re more than welcome to ride on my sledge,” said Ean, hugging his son.

  “Appreciate that,” said Gorbel, gruffly. “Assuming that this lady doesn’t denounce me. Krothen’s wagon masters have no fondness for the Caineron.”

  “I’m not sure I do either,” said Jame, “but you’re you. What quarrel do we have?”

  “None that I know of, unless you count the last time at Tentir when I tried to kill you.”

  “Oh, we’ve already gotten past that.”

  “Then, sir, I accept your offer. Now let’s get out of this demon-infested wilderness.”

  The caravan hastily trekked several more miles as the storm grew. The wind, whipping over dunes, covered and uncovered the bones of ancient, scattered dwellings so that sometimes they seemed to walk down dimly seen streets of the dead and sometimes through fields of petrified grain that snapped off under the lambas’ feet. There were sand-clogged wells and things that bent over them until the sand came again to cover all. Sometimes vast shapes wheeled overhead only to disintegrate in the lightning strokes.

  At last the wagon masters declared the ground safe. Once again all pitched camp, this time on the hard desert floor between dunes, and collapsed exhausted in their hastily erected tents.

  Meanwhile, the storm built.

  IV

  “And you didn’t denounce him?” demanded Timmon.

  It was the next morning, and the sandstorm roared over them blotting out the sun, turning everything a lurid yellow. No one would travel today.

  “At least Ean has a fighter on his team now. You should have seen Gorbel handle that sand monster.”

  “Oh, he’s good at killing things, no question about that. Some day, though, you’ll have to face the fact that he’s blood-kin to your brother’s worst enemy.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  “Of course not. When has Grandfather Adric ever said ‘no’ to Torisen?”

  “Repeatedly, starting when he didn’t let Tori attend the randon college. Your grandfather wanted a puppet for Highlord. He’s still coping with the fact that Torisen Black Lord doesn’t dance to anyone’s tune.”

  Timmon opened his mouth, then closed it. They were perilously close to bringing up his father Pereden who had definitely been Torisen’s enemy, and had made the entire Southern Host suffer for that enmity. Jame respected Timmon for coming to accept that, but she didn’t care to rub his nose in it.

  “I thought you liked Gorbel,” she said.

  Timmon ruffled his golden hair, perplexed. “I suppose I do, despite his rotten house. There’s something dependable about him. Decent, even, to the extent that his father leaves him alone, and even then…”

  Quill stuck his head into the tent. “You have company, Ten.”

  He opened the flap and bowed in a woman closely muffled in a cloak off of which sand cascaded. Jame and Timmon both rose.

  “I bring an invitation from the seekers’ tent,” said the visitor with a marked accent which Jame had last heard from the lips of a dying girl. “If the Knorth Lordan would deign to join my mistresses for a dish of tea…”

  Jame inclined her head. “I would be honored.”

  In Kens she added to Timmon, “Stay if you like, or go. I don’t know how long this will take, nor what it’s about.”

  The cloaked woman led her though the camp, both of them leaning sideways into the wind. Jame had donned a cape of her own, but sand as fine as flour still found its way into her clothes, eyes, and mouth where it ground unpleasantly between her teeth. Jorin trotted at her side. He at least could keep his eyes closed. The seekers’ tent was four times the size of her own with internal compartments that baffled most of the wind, but still bulged and swayed at its onslaught. The blond, portly woman and her thin, elderly companion waited for her in the innermost chamber sitting on rich carpets, steaming dishes set out before them. “Tea” was clearly a flexible term.

  Jame bowed to her hostesses and, at their invitation, sat cross-legged opposite them. Jorin curled up beside her. His nose twitched at the smell of food.

  “I am Kalan,” said the younger. “This is Laurintine. Our kinswoman, whom you tried to save, was Laurintine’s great-granddaughter, Lanielle.”

  “I’m sorry that my rescue failed. She tried to send you a message, but died first. My condolences.”

  Age and weight notwithstanding, Jame thought, these two ladies bore a striking resemblance to each other and to the young seeker who had so unnervingly crumbled to dust in her arms. They might almost have been the same woman at different ages.

  They offered sweetened tea and small honey cakes. Everything was gritty with dust. The canvas walls flexed as the wind buffeted them and the flame in a hanging brazier danced wildly. Jame sipped, wondering what else this was all about.

  The two seekers exchanged glances.

  “Tell her,” said the older one in a hoarse voice, as if the desert had her by the throat. “We agreed.”

  Kalan sighed. “Very well. You may have heard that this is a special caravan, perhaps the last of its kind. That may be. If so, someone in the Kencyr camp should know why in case anything goes wrong. King Krothen may demand secrecy, but your people have always been kind to us. For that and for Lanielle, we chose you.” She sighed again. “Where to begin.”

  “Long, long ago…” croaked Laurintine.

  “…there was a southern city named Langadine, on the edge of a great inland sea, surrounded by ancient civilizations. Of them all, though, it was the richest and the mos
t dazzling, home to merchants, nobles, and gods. But no place is paradise to all. One day a girl fled from that fabulous city and tried to drown herself in the sea. She was with child, you see, and unwed. That was a great shame then…”

  “As it is…to this day.”

  “Well, yes, but the water would not receive her. As she floundered in it, it turned to the salt of her tears. In the morning after a tempestuous night, she found herself lying on a dry salt plain with nothing but the bones of her city behind her.

  “Wanderers found her and took her to Kothifir. There she bore her child, a girl, and there she lived for many years. Eventually, however, she grew homesick and longed to return to Langadine. The king had heard her story. Intrigued by the idea of a great city in the Wastes, where he only knew of ruins, he mounted an expedition to take her and her daughter home. Thus she became the first seeker of the Langadine line.”

  “Did they find the city?” asked Jame.

  “They did. The northerners were amazed at its wealth, especially at a certain sheer fabric which they had never seen before.”

  “Silk.”

  “Yes. They took a bolt of it back to Kothifir led by the daughter who thus, because she had been born in Kothifir, became the first Kothifiran seeker. She had, by now, had a daughter of her own, who accompanied her. The travelers were welcome, but not by the king who had sent them. What for them had been only a few weeks’ journey for Kothifir had taken years.”

  “So they had traveled in time as well as in space.”

  “Again, yes. The king sent a trade mission, but they only found ruins in the desert. Langadine was not rediscovered until one of its two daughters, the maiden, agreed to lead an expedition. And so it has gone ever since. We seekers are always female members of the same lineage, able to find the city of our birth. There are usually three of us bound to each city: the maiden, her mother, and her grandmother, sometimes with a skip in generations, but there are fewer and fewer of us. I can lead this expedition back to Kothifir, having left a recently dead husband and a baby daughter behind me in that city, but my mother is also dead and Laurintine is the last Langadine seeker now that her great-granddaughter Lanielle is also gone.”