Lady of the Sands

by Fuad Baloch

  Then again, people had made decisions that might very well have appeared right to them in the moment.

  “Change this world!”

  “Shut up,” Ruma whispered, waving a casual hand. She looked up. Where in the fracking fates was she headed? Two more days till they arrived at Fanima. The oasis town that was by most accounts she had overheard already crawling with followers of Bubraza.

  When one pushed soldiers from opposing sides together in blistering heat and roiling seas of religious fervour, what could happen?

  This prophecy… How would that affect what happened in the peninsula afterwards?

  Why was she here?

  “Hungry?” asked the merchant.

  Ruma forced a smile, turned towards him. The mask had slipped completely, revealing a weathered and lined dark brown face. “Thought you’d never ask.”

  Sixteen

  The Prophecy

  In many ways, Fanima seemed exactly like Yiahan. Another dust-coated oasis town surrounded by ever encroaching sands. Larger, maybe, but not significantly so.

  What was different was the number of armed men swarming through its narrow streets, the hostility barely restrained as believers of both factions eyed each other with murderous intent. They weren’t the only ones wielding weapons, of course. Soldiers from governors of the holy cities, using the brown Scythe as their sigils and entrusted for keeping peace between the Traditionalists and Blessed, watched them both.

  The key difference this day was how all foot traffic seemed to be heading east, towards the hills in the distance. Not the random and haphazard traffic that defined a bustling town. A mass exodus.

  Ruma stretched her limbs, then ambled over to stand underneath the shade offered by an awning in the central square. The day was hot, felt even more charged with all the latent hostility.

  “Alf curses the lot of you,” snarled a Blessed captain accompanied by three warriors at a similarly sized group of Traditionalists also moving east.

  “You will burn beside the two devils,” replied one of the Traditionalists, waving his fist in the air. “And the Vanico infidels we will send your way once we’re finished with you!”

  The Blessed captain, another nondescript, long-bearded guy with a fanatic’s unrelenting stare, stopped for a second. One of his companions said something urgently, pointing at the governor’s men. A breath later, the group began moving once more.

  Ruma watched the square, which teemed with people—the wrong sorts of people.

  Since their arrival last night, she had been chomping to get onto the square and begin negotiating for the metals she needed, except all she saw now were columns of warriors, flocks of priests, scared yet excited locals who eyed everyone with suspicion. Groups of men and women with one thing in common: their desire to head east towards the hills.

  The only traders that did peddle their wares offered fruits, nuts, and other such assortments. Not the ones Ruma needed. Maybe the Kapuri siblings did have the right idea about what would sell here.

  “Hey,” Ruma called out to a man in long purple robes and followed by two younger men carrying trunks. “I… apprentice to a blacksmith. Where are all the merchants selling metals?” She waved at the row of shuttered shops to her right. “Even the local blacksmithy seems to have shut up for business.”

  “Mzi,” said the man, squinting as if myopic, “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until the prophecy has been read out.”

  “What’s that got to do with the blacksmiths and other traders?”

  He shrugged. “Talk to the governors.” Then he snapped his fingers and resumed his journey eastwards.

  Ruma exhaled, cracked her knuckles.

  The prophecy. That was what was consuming them all. The locals and thousands upon thousands of visitors all hanging on to hear words allegedly uttered hundreds of years ago. Words, she reckoned, everyone would eventually find a way to twist to meet their agendas.

  If she were one of the governors tasked to keep peace, the first thing she would have done would have been to ensure neither of the armies got a chance to use the town’s resources to strengthen their military positions. And that meant shutting up the blacksmithies and other such traders.

  Ironically, she had arrived too soon. A day after the blasted prophecy and all merchants, seeing the visitors leave, would have been clamouring to offer their wares at rock-bottom prices. Not that she could afford those prices, either.

  Yet the basic rules of commerce still held in this world. And so it held that there would also be those who would stand to profit by flouting restrictions put on by authorities.

  People like her.

  She smiled, closed her eyes for a second, stretching her tired arms.

  “—their catapults spit out fire,” a passer-by was saying.

  “Surely, you jest. Only Alf commands fire.”

  Someone cackled. “If the infidels feared Alf, why would they even be here on the peninsula?”

  A murmur of trepidation ran through Ruma’s veins, illuminated by a flash of empathy. There was plenty she saw and heard she ridiculed here—everything from these primitive people’s views on hygiene and medical care and the place of women—but how would she have fared any better if this was the only life she’d ever lived?

  Ruma opened her eyes. No good to be gained by idle philosophising. Again, she surveyed the shops, the distant stalls. The former remained shut, and just beyond the conical hats, even the few traders offering condiments and nuts were packing up their wares.

  Whether she liked it or not, today wouldn’t be the day when she got what she needed. For a second, she debated breaking into the blacksmithy she had spied on her way towards the square. After all, her intentions were good, noble even, in wanting to return to her world instead of playing a pawn to the Pithrean.

  Noble. Is that how the Blessed rationalised their looting as well?

  She shifted uncomfortably at the thought, not liking the parallel her mind drew.

  She shook her head, turned her head east, towards the hill the locals called Mithi. Not a name she recognised. The place where the prophecy would be unveiled.

  “How do they even know it’s not just some random words being cried out be a lunatic instead of whatever the prophet Pasalman had actually said?” she had asked the old merchant during her ride with the Blessed.

  “The prophecy cannot be faked.”

  She had arched an eyebrow, taken aback by the man’s irrational response.

  “Do you truly not know?” the merchant had asked, looking up from his bowl of onion soup, the surrounding fires casting shadows on the deep lines in his leathery face. Ruma had snorted. “The words were carved on a stone tablet by the prophet Pasalman himself before he passed away, then entrusted to his confidant, who hid them somewhere in the hills of Mithi.” The merchant paused. “‘The words will be revealed when the world is ready,’ the prophet had declared.”

  “So what’s stopping someone from carving gibberish on a tablet and producing that as the prophecy?”

  “No one would do that,” the merchant had said, his tone serious, matter-of-fact. “For Alf would smite down anyone that dared to twist His word.”

  She had chuckled, then turned away, lest her irreverence rankle even one of the more open-minded people she’d met so far.

  And now, here she stood, watching the town vomit men, women, its old and young, hale and hobbled, soldiers and priests, believers and sceptics, towards the hill that had stood for centuries guarding a secret that had remained hidden until today.

  Why had she never heard of this so-called prophecy? Then again, even if she had, what was to confirm the version she’d heard was the true account? Besides, she had come to realise that the past wasn’t exactly how it had been written down. The Gulatu her history books had recorded could very well have been termed a megalomaniac, a right asshole, a tyrant for the ruthless way in which he had forged the empire of Alf. Even if her Gulatu wasn’t exactly the same man, how could she control how
others, say the Hengoli, chose to depict him? No, the past wasn’t as immutable and true as others had held. Another case in point—images of the Lady in Alfi temples of her time sharing little with Yasmeen, proof of artists taking liberties with truth.

  Anyway, if she hadn’t heard of Mithi or the prophecy at all, maybe it hadn’t really been such an important event, after all.

  Regardless, a part of her argued, wasn’t it better to turn away from these momentous events, not risk anything she couldn’t control?

  Ruma sighed, wondered how the fracking histories would record these conflicting thoughts of hers. Assuming they bothered with her, of course. The simple truth was that she had to wait and let this day, one most important in the lives of most of these people, pass on before continuing with her objective.

  Resigned to her fate for the moment, she gritted her teeth and stepped in to join the throngs heading out of town.

  “May Alf guard us all,” said someone behind her.

  “Alf—”

  “—the blessed prophet and—”

  Ruma shook her head, the fervour of the crowd getting to her nerves. They knew nothing of the worlds outside their own, had no idea of the kinds of non-human life that existed mere systems away. They couldn’t even begin to comprehend the monster that sat in her mind this very second, observing this world from the viewpoint of a god. Yet all they ever talked about somehow managed to involve a divine who frankly didn’t seem to care much for them.

  “Hey,” she said, knocking at her forehead with the index finger. “What do you make of all this prophecy business?”

  The First didn’t reply. Then again, if he had responded, chances were good he’d have stuck to the same practised lines anyway. She resented his presence, wanted to carve him out of her, but for the moment, she could see no practical way to do that. Maybe she had to keep pestering him, see if he slipped up, offered up something she could use later.

  And perhaps a way of gaining his trust was to show her involvement in this world, let him think she was beginning to see things his way.

  She’d take her revenge on the Pithrean, and she would leave this godforsaken land. It didn’t really matter which event happened first, for eventually, she would see to them both.

  The crowd continued to grow, its pace slowing down to a crawl. Men and women, their stinking bodies intermixing with mass hysteria and overpowering flower extracts, assaulted her senses. The sun still blazed ahead. Cramped for room, still chafing from the ride, annoyed at everything around her, Ruma snapped at anyone that dared bump into her. Not that it achieved much.

  Like counter-currents running underneath visible ones, a pattern she couldn’t quite see even if she could sense it, the motion of the crowd jostled her this way and that. She shoved, elbowed, but made sure she was always moving forwards and onwards, not caring for the dirty looks she attracted. Men, seeing she was a woman, bit their tongues. Women who did shout Ruma merely ignored.

  The few hands that did reach for her bottom all got slaps and angry glares, the shoulders rubbing against her breasts received punches and yells. Holiest day of the year or not, moved by religion in their chests or not, it seemed men remained men.

  An eternity later, when she finally emerged out into a clearing, the shirt Yenita had lent her was sticking to her back, her face moist with sweat. Ruma dabbed at her forehead, pushed the hair back, thanked the stars for the opportunity at drawing a long, uninterrupted breath.

  She looked up. Mithi stood to her right. No taller than hundred yards at its highest, it seemed to dwarf the pale sand hills around it and the teeming sea of humanity spreading along its perimeter.

  Ruma exhaled, failing to see anything of import from her position. This was not her world. Unless she was right at the front of the crowds, there would be no holo cameras or some such means of technology to relay what went on at Mithi itself.

  She rolled up her sleeves, then, without pausing to consider what she was doing, dove right into the crowds once more. She waded through the throngs for another half an hour or so. She panted, puffed, her breath coming out in gasps, and her feet finally found hard ground underneath.

  Trusting her sense of direction, she continued trudging, finally emerging onto a relatively sparse hilly ledge manned by armed warriors to either side. Breathing hard, she braced for them to shout at her, order her back into the drudgery behind her.

  They might have done just so had it not been for the fact they were more interested in staring each other down. Men meant to be fighting each other, forced to stay away from each other’s throats on account of the temporary truce.

  Their lack of focus was Ruma’s cue for taking initiative.

  Tucking her chin, she trotted up the cropping. Someone did shout at her to pull back. She didn’t listen. No other voices followed.

  She slowed down at the edge, then, dropping to a crouch, leaned over.

  Providence, it seemed had finally given her a break. Not fifty yards ahead, figures stood outside a gaping cave in the Mithi hills.

  She had arrived. Exhaling, Ruma lay down, inched even closer to hear them better.

  Fifty or so warriors stood in a semicircle outside the cave’s entrance, leaving a narrow path in the middle. Ruma squinted, scanning the heads for the palanquin, the haughty face of Yasmeen. Or even this Bubraza she kept hearing about.

  Priests, dressed in white tunics, Scythes emblazoned on the front and back, stood awkwardly in the centre of the huddle. Two old men stood between them, neither of them acknowledging the other. Representatives of both sides?

  “There!” shouted a warrior behind her. Ruma turned her neck. A figure was emerging from the cave, the hands clutching what seemed like a slab of pale metal against his chest. A hush fell on the priests closest to the cave, then, like ripples in a pond, spread over the crowd as the figure paused at the entrance.

  Ruma inhaled. The figure was a tall man, his snow-white eyebrows bushy, unkempt, the face hidden behind a wild beard that fell all the way to his belly. For a long second, he remained standing at the threshold. Beside him, a shadow lingered. Ruma blinked, catching the flicker of orange dreadlocks. Before she could dwell any more on it, the shadow vanished and the old man stepped out.

  One of the Alfi priests took a tentative step forwards. The one beside him followed. Both of them nodded at each other, then bowed their heads in unison.

  “We greet you,” began the first.

  “In the name of Alf and his messenger Gulatu Koza,” completed the second.

  Was it a formula of sorts, some contrivance the two forces had devised together? The tall, wizened man ignored them both, walking past them. The other priests broke into nervous chattering.

  The old man didn’t stop until he’d walked outside the circle the priests had formed around him. “God recognises no clergy, tolerates no one between Him and His creation!” His voice was strong, carrying over easily to Ruma, someone well-versed in public speaking in an era without means of amplifying one’s message.

  “The worlds prophets Pasalman and Gulatu Koza lived in are different!” objected one of the priests even as he hurried to get into position. “You have no authority to—”

  The wizened figure clutching the tablet raised his hand and the priest fell silent. Despite his appearance, here was a man who knew he held power over others and was well-versed in using it.

  “I’ve been entrusted the last words of prophet Pasalman,” he declared, holding aloft the stone tablet. Ruma blinked, finding her heart suddenly beginning to thud against her ribs. She might not have thought of this affair as more than a charade, but the man had a true flair for drama, sweeping her up just as much as the others.

  The old man waited for two long breaths, his large eyes scanning the sea of humanity he could spy from his vantage position.

  “The prophet preceded your Gulatu Koza by a long time, yet his words were guided by the Lord of Worlds you call Alf,” declared the man who might very well have been a priest as well—albeit
of a different faith. “And now in accordance with his wishes, I read out his words to the world.”

  With a theatrical flourish, he turned the tablet and began reading in a singsongy voice: “The end times are near, so declare I, a prophet of Lord of the Worlds. Water and Fire. Doonya and the Sun. The two moons and the black nothingness. Life and Death. When one comes, so does the second. And the second shall rival the first. Together. Apart. Fire and Water.”

  The priest nodded, hugged the tablet against his chest.

  “Now go away, the lot of you!” he barked, then turned and began marching back to the cave he had emerged from, leaving stunned silence in his wake.

  Seventeen

  Towering Figures

  Sucking her teeth, Ruma forced herself to remain calm. “And where can I get purer ingots?”

  The portly trader with the perpetual scowl shook his head once more. “That’s all I’ve got, laal. You want anything better, go mine it yourself.”

  Ruma restrained herself, then examined the obstinate merchant’s stall. Impure metals that wouldn’t have passed the muster for a toddler’s first introduction to the sciences. “There has to be a way to get purer metals,” she muttered.

  “Like I said, take it or leave it, Mzi.”

  Ruma gritted her teeth. The man was a pain to deal with. Unfortunately, he was also the only merchant wiling to ply his trade a day after the entire town had been swept up by the prophecy business. Perhaps he might have been more helpful had she not already admitted her sorry state of provisions. Not the best move on her part.

  Ruma took a step back, shrugged her shoulders to demonstrate she had better options and was in no great hurry. The merchant raised his hand.

  “Wait.”

  Ruma did.

  “I’ve got another caravan coming in from the Vanico Empire. Provided it gets past their blasted armies, that is. I’ll have purer metals to trade soon.”