by CA Morgan
He discovered to his surprise and annoyance that Raga had managed to fall asleep on a galloping horse and was snoring quite peacefully. The red jewel no longer glowed like a burning coal; nevertheless, it was clutched tightly in his hand.
Now that the horses were walking, Eris carefully balanced Raga by slumping him forward so he could sleep undisturbed. He twisted around to view the havoc Raga created.
From their higher position on the desert floor, he saw the enormous sheet of icy-smooth, Raga-forged glass. The bright sunlight shimmered on its surface making it appear as a cool, refreshing pond. Here and there the small shapes of men and horses still struggled. Poor beasts, Eris thought, and wondered how this incident would be explained to the Sultan. Those soldiers will probably spend the rest of their lives in chains, Eris smirked, but the humor faded fast. He hoped it would be a long time before he found himself in such a predicament again.
Raga slept through the rest of the morning and afternoon. Left solely to his thoughts, Eris brooded over the events in Reshan. Not even the good wine Raga had packed, which was probably magically contrived, made him feel better. Having come this far in his quest for the three gems, he wasn’t about to get besotted again, though the gods knew how he wanted to.
His right wrist suddenly throbbed as is rested against his thigh. He looked down. One of the cuts made by the iron bands had pulled open and was bleeding again. The wound was red and swollen, as were several of the other gashes on his other wrist. He carefully upended the wineskin and poured the liquid into the wounds. It stung as it ran into the deeper cuts, but it was preferable to the infection likely to set in if it hadn’t already. There was nothing to use as a bandage, so he rode for a while with his wrists turned up to the warm, desert sun. The awkward position of his hands only reminded him of what he wanted to forget and deepened his angry melancholy. Charra-Tir had a more complete revenge on him than ever she could have imagined.
Swallowing the last drop of wine in the skin he’d nursed for some time, he hurled the empty skin far out into the sand and turned to look back across the distance they had come. This time he saw no sign of pursuit and Ulna Karahm’s towering palms had disappeared from sight. A sense of relief came unexpectedly over him, yet at the same time, he felt that a part of him had been abandoned there. He didn’t know why, how, or what that could be, but it troubled him in an odd way nevertheless. Perhaps one day, in the far distant future, he would consider the feeling again, but for now he only wanted to forget.
Turning back around, his eyes rested on Raga’s sleeping form and he contemplated his options. How easy it would be to let his horse wander off and become lost in the vast desert. The waning of the sorcerer’s powers was more evident, and the morning’s escape seemed to have weakened him further. With limited use of his arcane abilities, Eris thought perhaps it would take the sorcerer quite a while to find him again. By then, it might be possible that he would be rid of the curse and more inclined to give Raga his stones back. At last, he frowned. There was no guarantee whatsoever that once the powerful sorcerer had possession of his gems, they wouldn’t be used against him.
He looked down at Raga’s hand and sighed. In spite of being sound asleep, the sorcerer tightly clutched the stone. He doubted he could take it from him without him waking. Besides, a small part of his conscience nagged at him, the man had saved his life and that required some acknowledgment on his part. His honor spoke louder and demanded it.
The afternoon drew to a close and the sun turned into a fiery, orange ball burning on the horizon, while streaks of pink and purple colored the darkening sky in the east. Without the blazing heat of the sun, the desert quickly lost its warmth and the chill of approaching night came on. Eris wondered if Raga had remembered to pack his clothing. He felt odd in the eunuch’s attire now that it had served its purpose, and even a little sunburned on his shoulders and back.
Carefully, he unfastened the gold chains from around his neck and placed them in his coin pouch, which was one of the first items he found in his pack. The pouch was much too empty for his liking, but the heavy chains would go a long way in filling it with coins.
Raga snorted suddenly and woke from his slumber. He shook his wooly head and rubbed a hand across his stiff neck. He sighed and groaned a bit as he straightened in the saddle trying to stretch the stiffness out of cramped muscles.
“By the gods! Have I slept all day?” he asked. He quickly scanned the sky above, and then looked out across the empty, arid plain.
“Obviously,” Eris commented dryly. He frowned, when he saw Raga absently slip the red gem into the pouch hanging from his belt. “Did you remember to bring my clothes?”
Raga gave him a sideways glance filled with annoyance and picked up the wineskin hanging from his saddle horn.
“Why, thank you, Eris. Yes, I do feel much better,” Raga said shortly and unstoppered the skin. He took a swallow, swished it in his mouth and spat it on the ground. “You could at least be a little thankful that you still have a back to cover.”
“My apologies,” Eris said and inclined his head toward Raga.
“I assume we haven’t been followed for the greater part of the day?”
Eris rummaged through his saddlebags. “No, I haven’t seen anyone, not even in the distance, since the cavalry fell to your trap.” He finally found his cloak and pulled it out. It would keep the chill away until they stopped for the night.
“I think some food would do us both good about now,” Raga suggested.
“That it would. I’ve not eaten a decent meal since the one at the inn,” Eris agreed, hungry now that the suggestion was made.
Raga handed Eris a round ball of yellow cheese, some dried meat and an apple. Eris grabbed up another skin of wine and devoured the apple.
“So, what happened this morning, when I couldn’t hear you through the bond?” he asked and tossed the apple core onto the sand.
“Something I feared might happen. I’m losing more and more of my power as time passes. Making good our escape this morning severely taxed my abilities. I need to be careful from now on and use it only when absolutely necessary,” Raga said. He stretched up and yawned. “No wonder I feel so tired.”
“But I could still see the link as brightly as ever,” Eris said.
“That’s because you seem to have some strange propensity for the working of sorcery. Were it not for that, we might have been in greater trouble. But, I wish you’d stop doing things you aren’t supposed to do,” Raga said.
“Like what?”
“Like throwing that rock into my stream. That was a very dangerous thing for you to do, and before you say anything, let me explain. By doing that, untrained as you are, you risked accidentally melding our minds together. Forever,” Raga said with emphasis on the last word.
Eris was appalled. “Forever?” He swallowed hard.
“Yes. You can’t go into my mind, nor I into yours, and change the other’s ideas and impressions. By moving that stone, you changed my impression of the stream and forced your will upon it. You created something completely different.”
“By only moving one stone?”
“The stone is immaterial to the point. The important thing is that something was changed.” Raga pressed his fingers together into a weave pattern. “Think of our two minds as the weft and warp of a piece of fabric. The opposing threads weave together, flow together, to form a smooth piece of cloth. Our minds are like that. Two opposing forces flowing together and what you did was tie a knot into our fabric. If you make enough mental knots, we become knotted together in a sense and our individual thoughts are no longer our own, but ours together,” Raga explained.
He wrinkled his nose at his apple and tossed it to Eris. He chuckled at seeing the look of distress on Eris’ face and felt a sense of horror ripple through his thoughts.
“I knew you would understand,” Raga laughed. “Fortunately, this little knot you made isn’t very strong and will work itself out in time.”
&nb
sp; “I should have known it would come to something like this,” Eris said, biting into the apple. “When I tossed that rock, I felt a queasy rolling somewhere in my own mind.”
“As I said, tying knots. Wrapping one piece of thread around another.”
“Believe me, I won’t ever do that again,” Eris said and thought a moment. “That leads me to believe that undoing this bond isn’t as easy as creating it.”
“True, but it wears off eventually if left unused. Fortunately for you, it will be sooner than later with the decline of my power,” Raga said, looking up at the stars and the silver sliver of the waning moon. “We should have enough light to travel for a while tonight.”
“You want to keep going after all we’ve been through? The horses are nearly spent as it is. They took a pretty good scare and have been moving all day,” Eris said.
“I know, but we can’t stop until we’ve crossed the border out of Reshan and into Briamithis, so we’ll head in a more westerly direction. Until we do, we run the risk of being captured by a patrol, or one of the nomadic tribes. Somehow, information travels fast in this desolate region and I want to be out of this desert as soon as possible,” Raga said.
“That makes two of us,” Eris said and reined in his horse.
“Why are you stopping?” Raga asked and halted his animal.
“Are you sure this is my saddle?”
“It’s the same one you left Rennas Baye with. Why?”
“For some reason it’s been damned uncomfortable,” Eris answered and dismounted. “All afternoon I’ve tried to get myself situated in it.”
Loosening a strap behind the saddle, Eris pulled out his boots and sat down in the warm sand to pull them on. That would at least allow him to feel a little more clothed and normal.
“That’s quite a costume you have on,” Raga commented, watching the crimson pantaloons billow out over the boot tops. “I’ve been meaning to ask how you came by it.”
“I was in a hurry. It was the best I could do under the circumstances.”
“What circum—” Raga froze mid-word. His eyes widened a bit as he stared down at Eris.
Eris glanced over his shoulder, when Raga failed to speak. “What now?” The way Raga was looking at him annoyed him.
“Eris! You’re a man!”
Eris let go a frustrated sigh as he twisted around to have a better look at Raga. The sun beating down on his head all day had affected brain.
“Now is not the time to play the idiot with me,” he warned.
“But the new moon isn’t for ten more days and you came over the wall as a man. You shouldn’t have changed back until at least the battle at the gate.”
“Really?” Eris said with heavy with sarcasm. “Not even the mighty Raga-Tor knows the complete insidiousness of this curse. I thought you knew all the twists and turns of Red Vale sorcery.”
Eris stood up and shook the sand from his cloak.
“Don’t look at me as though you don’t understand. You know very well what happened to make me change back.” He shook an accusing finger at Raga. “You probably knew all along, but kept it from me. That’s why you wanted to watch and listen in on that whole sordid night and get some perverse pleasure at my expense.”
“In truth, Eris, I didn’t know. That’s why I asked you before we even reached Reshan what would happen. Had I known for sure, I wouldn’t have asked. But now that the subject has come up…some details? Just for curiosity’s sake,” Raga assured. His eyes glowed a little too brightly and gave him away.
“Absolutely not. I don’t want to remember what happened, much less give you the details.”
“Don’t be so stubborn. It’s only a natural part of life.”
“Natural?” Eris said incredulously. “That was anything but natural.”
“Oh, come now. It’s just the two of us out here in this desolation. It’s not like we’re telling stories at a tavern. What was it like?” Raga needled.
“Let the witch put the curse on you and find out for yourself.”
“One word.”
“You should quit pestering me while you’re still seated comfortably in your saddle,” Eris warned, losing his patience.
Raga merely smiled and looked at him expectantly with a rise of one bushy brow.
Eris let his shoulders slump and made a sound of exasperation.
“Damn you, Raga. One word and then you will never ask me about it again?”
“Agreed.”
“Disgusting.”
“That wasn’t a very creative word. I know you can do better,” Raga complained and Eris scowled furiously at him. Then from deep inside a low, rumbling chuckle rose up from Raga’s paunch and tumbled loudly into the night. “No wonder your saddle bothers you so much. Now I understand.”
Eris looked at him and thought the sorcerer had finally lost his mind. Raga tried to contain his laughter and wiped the tears from his eyes.
“Who would have thought that of you, Eris? As a woman, you were a virgin.”
“You bastard!” Eris swore and glared furiously at Raga, who had started to snicker again. Eris grabbed the bridle of his horse and trod off into the night.
Raga followed a safe distance behind and laughed until he thought he would burst.
The Reshan night was complete. The moonlight was the only witness to the tracks left in the sand by travelers seeking the colder climes of the north, and the third gem to the magical bow.
As night came to the stunned city of Reshan, so fell the headsman’s ax on the necks of the scheming guards; and the woman-child, Pashtine, fell into a terrified swoon as she was chosen to replace the bewitching Erisa as the wife of a wrathful Sultan.
Chapter 4
On the Moren Forest Path
Beneath the gray-green branches of an ancient, sprawling spruce, whose massive limbs had long ago tangled with those of its neighbors, a small fire flickered brightly in the blackness of a moonless night.
Eris, dressed in familiar black and green, and with weapons tucked into every possible place, leaned against the trunk. Neatly spread upon the ground to his right were the daggers he had taken from the Sultan’s chambers. One, carved with strange runes, caught his attention. He picked it up and idly turned it over in his hands.
During their frantic escape, he had completely forgotten about the daggers tucked away in the folds of Hofa’s sash. In the wee hours of the night, when he stopped to relieve himself and change into more suitable clothing, the daggers fell from the sash. His fury was akin to that of the fireball Raga blasted across the sand and only the briefest moment of sanity kept him from running the sorcerer through with razor-sharp steel. At the time, he rerolled the blades into the silken sash and shoved them to the bottom of his saddlebag and refused to talk to the sorcerer for several days.
This caused Raga considerable distress and on at least one occasion he threatened to send Eris to Riza’s Pits and forget the whole affair. Eris obliged him in his threat and offered himself with a silent, taunting gesture.
Eris tried to ignore the weapons’ existence, but his interest in the beautiful and unusual blades always drew him back. When it did, it also led him to believe that the curse on the Sultan’s palace was only a rumor. Or, a lie Raga had made up to force him into that humiliating situation for reasons he likely would never find out. It gave him reason to believe that the purported animosity between Raga-Tor and Charra-Tir was not to the level implied.
Eris tensed as a twig snapped in the darkness. The image of Raga stepping into the fire’s light relieved him. The sorcerer, arms laden with a bundle of dried wood, grunted as he stooped over to drop the logs close to the fire. Raga wiped his face with a cloth and sat on the ground across the fire from Eris.
“I thought you never wanted to see those again,” Raga said.
“They may have their use,” Eris answered with a glance to Raga.
“About time you uttered a word,” Raga grumbled.
Eris continued to turn the carved dagger
with his fingers. “Don't think it means anything.”
Raga felt a familiar sense of unease. Eris’ voice was much too calm. His fingers played with the balance of the dagger. The sharp steel glinted in the firelight as he practiced flipping it end-over-end.
“A rather interesting collection, don’t you think?” Eris continued in a low voice.
Raga didn’t like the look on Eris’ face. The firelight sharply defined his arrogant features, and the contempt in his deep-violet eyes seemed to devour the flames’ brightness. Nor did he like the way Eris’ dark glance seemed perfectly timed with the flipping action of the strange little dagger, which moved deftly and quickly between his fingers.
“I still don't know how this it possible? You should have—”
“Because you lied to me,” Eris accused and continued furiously. “How many other lies have you told me? In return for tormenting me, does Riza promise to save you from the Seventh Hell after I kill you? Or, perhaps, it’s really Chara-Tir who holds the pieces of this little game. The world is full of fools you can play. If I were you, I’d find another.”
“You judge me unfairly. Why would I lie about something I’ve seen with my own eyes?”
“How do I know what fiendish plots go through your head, Raga-Tor, the Great Destroyer,” Eris sneered. “And how long ago did you see this? Last year, or two centuries ago?”
“It doesn’t matter when. And why should I lie to you? Had I wanted to destroy you, I could have done it many times over. Not that I haven’t been tempted, mind you.” Raga shook a finger at him. “Mark me, Eris, what I say is true. In a year or two, go back to Reshan and bribe some fool to steal something from the palace. See it for yourself.”
With an eye still on Eris, he reached out and pulled his bedroll closer and spread it on the ground close to the fire. For more than a day he had wondered where the last of Eris’ anger was and when his fury would escape. It wasn’t like Eris to have kept something like this buried for so long.
