by Stephen Deas
‘Don’t be stupid. I’m here to rescue you.’
‘I didn’t want to be rescued!’
Not-Kalaiya rolled her eyes. ‘Fine, then I’m abducting you. Would you like to go back?’
‘Not really.’ If she wanted, she could have killed him in his bath, as easy as anything. But rescue? ‘Who sent you?’
Careful, T’Varr. She’s not what she says.
Not what she says? Oh how marvellously astute!.
You’re really not helping much here. ‘How do you look like her?’
‘I’m a skin-shifter from the Konsidar.’
‘And I’m a dragon in a funny hat!’
‘You asked.’ Not-Kalaiya shrugged. ‘I really don’t mind if you don’t believe me.’
‘Shifter skin. That’s what it is. You have a shifter skin. So show me who you really are.’
‘Look away, T’Varr.’
‘Why?’
Not-Kalaiya watched him steadily until he turned away. He’d been in Cashax when he first heard of shifter skin, years ago when he and Vey Rin had been tearing up the city’s heart every night, looking for each thrill to be bigger than the last. Vey Rin had come in one night with a story of a woman – or maybe it was a man – who had a coat of skin and could become anything you wanted. They’d gone looking but they never found her, and Tsen was sure now that she’d never existed, because was that how you spent your time if you had the power to change into the shape of anyone at all? He remembered how he’d wondered what he might do with such a treasure.
But maybe it had been some sort of elaborate game. He and Vey Rin and some of the others back in Cashax had set challenges for each other. Stupid dares, and this would have been right up their street. So, go and abduct the stupid fat t’varr from under the noses of the people who want to kill him. Then leave him naked in the desert with a bottle of apple wine and tell him he has to sing a song about the nymphs of the Yalun Zarang. Sometimes, remembering what he used to be like made his skin want to crawl off and go and be with someone else.
‘You can look now.’ When Tsen looked back, Not-Kalaiya was gone and in her place stood a slender man of similar height and build. His face, in the dim light of the storm-dark and the dazzling flashes of lightning that spat down from the eyrie now and then, made him look little more than a boy.
‘What if one of those bolts hits us?’ snapped Tsen.
The man shrugged. ‘Then whether this is a rescue or not will be of academic interest and no one will ever find us.’ The man uncoiled a rope from around his waist and tossed it into Tsen’s lap. Instinct made Tsen grab it, but the rope writhed and wriggled in his hands like a snake. He yelped and tried to scrabble away. One hand went over the invisible edge of the sled and he fell back. The rope moved fast as lightning and wrapped itself around him, pinning his arms to his waist. He cried out as he began to topple over the side of the sled but the rope was tight around him, the far end held fast in the other man’s hands. Tsen glared at him.
The shifter pulled on the rope, dragging Tsen away from the edge. ‘Clearly, T’Varr, if I wanted you dead then I would simply have let the lords of Vespinarr have their way. So I want you alive, at least for a while. Frankly I’d been hoping for a little more gratitude.’
‘Really?’ Tsen looked pointedly at the rope wrapped around him. ‘Was that before or after you decided to pretend you were my Kalaiya?’
The sled eased away from the shelter of the eyrie. The wind roared fierce and the shifter had to shout into Tsen’s ear to make himself heard. ‘Look up, T’Varr! Three glasships approached low, hugging the surface of the storm-dark. They sent their soldiers on sleds like this, so small you wouldn’t see them coming, so many your dragon wouldn’t be able to kill them all. The glasships were to draw your monster into the sky while the soldiers passed beneath it, but you never saw them coming at all.’
‘And in the midst of that, you thought you’d rescue me? How kind. Show me your shifter skin, whoever you are.’ Tsen snorted. ‘You know where it comes from? Shed by the Righteous Ones of the Konsidar.’ He sniffed the air. ‘It should stink.’
The shifter paused for a moment. ‘You’re right, of course. Only we don’t exactly shed it, T’Varr. It has to be flayed from our still-living bodies. It has to be enchanted and cut and stitched into clothes. Abraxi the sorceress made exactly three sets from us before the Elemental Men made an end of her. Remind me, T’Varr: where were you when the Vespinese came?’
‘I was . . .’ The wind ripped the words off his lips and shredded them. Tsen sighed. In my bath. Without a clue they were coming. ‘Take me back!’
‘No.’ The shifter shook his head. ‘T’Varr, I took the place of one of their soldiers. This is his sled. Sea Lord Shonda was very specific: we find you, we kill you. Very specific indeed.’
‘Shonda? Shonda himself?’
The sled was clear of the eyrie now. Tsen looked up and gasped. There must have been fifty glasships above the dragon yard, or sixty or perhaps even more. In the night sky they were lit up from within by the gold light at their hearts, sprinkled and sparkling through concentric annuli that spun one within the next and all inside the slow rotation of each great outer disc. The rims shone a brilliant white, their lightning cannons bright and ready, shining on the eyrie like a full moon. They were clustering slowly together, layering themselves so they were all huddled above the eyrie. Tsen had never seen so many so close together. They looked like a shoal of giant glowing jellyfish, only instead of seeing them from above and from the deck of a ship, he was seeing them from below as though he was some tiny fish.
‘These lords of Vespinarr came to your home with two things in mind,’ yelled the shifter. ‘To kill you and to take what was yours. I don’t know why and I don’t care, though if you wish to air your opinions then go ahead. We have a long journey and I’m fond of conversation.’ He guided the sled back towards the shelter of the eyrie.
‘Who are you?’
The man shook his head and chuckled. ‘A friend of Bronzehand.’
‘Bronzehand?’ The youngest of Quai’Shu’s sons. Bronzehand, who’d been trying to reach him right before this skin-shifter had come. Well there’s a thing. Bronzehand was possibly the one person in the world who might have a reason for keeping him alive, the only trouble being he was across the storm-dark in a different world, and people had a tendency to vanish when they tried to penetrate the jungles of Qeled. Another thought struck Tsen. He laughed. ‘Looks like Meido’s going to win our wager after all.’ Maybe that was why Bronzehand was so interested.
‘What wager was that?’
Well done, tongue. Anything else you’d like to share? Tsen sighed again. ‘Nothing that matters now. We wagered this eyrie on how long Sea Lord Quai’Shu would live. I’m a month short.’ Bronzehand. For some reason that made him feel safe.
Really? You feel safe?
Well, safer than I did a few minutes ago.
And why’s that, then, T’Varr?
Because Bronzehand could be an ally.
An ally? Ha! Walking corpses don’t have allies, T’Varr.
Well thank you for that little piece of joy. Although the voices had a point.
‘What’s your name, boy?’ All this shouting into the teeth of the wind was making him think of being at sea. He hadn’t been at sea for a long time and hadn’t much liked it either.
The shifter yelled back, ‘If you knew how old I was you’d choke. I’ve more years than you, T’Varr, and let’s leave it at that.’ They sank slowly towards the maelstrom, keeping under the eyrie where the glasships wouldn’t see them.
‘Your face says otherwise.’
‘I’m surprised you put any trust in faces. As for names, I wear them every bit as easily. Call me Sivan.’ He grinned and bared his teeth.
‘Sivan. Well then, Sivan, I am first t’varr to a sea lord, and now you can take me back where I belong. I will not leave without Kalaiya.’
The sled dropped suddenly. Tsen screamed as they pl
unged like a stone towards the storm-dark. ‘Kalaiya!’ They were really going without her. Somehow he had thought there might be a miracle, that he could change what would happen. ‘Kalaiya! Kalaiya!’ He struggled against the rope, rocking back and forth until he almost threw himself off the plummeting sled, and screaming and screaming until Sivan whirled about and touched him and everything went black.
31
A Half-Remembered Place
For the second time Baros Tsen T’Varr opened his eyes and wondered where he was. This time he quickly screwed them shut again. The wind had stopped. The air was still and the sky was as bright as the sun. The sled under his back was hard and uncomfortable. He shifted, trying to stretch himself out, and realised he could move and that the rope was gone. He rolled onto his back, sat up and tried that eye-opening thing again. It didn’t much help. Everywhere he looked, all he saw were rolling waves of dazzling sand. He was out in the open in the middle of the desert in the middle of the morning with no shelter and, as far as he could tell, no water.
‘Come on. Get up.’ Sivan was poking him.
His first thought was to push Sivan off the sled and fly away. ‘If we’re going to debate the terms of your surrender, could we at least do it somewhere comfortable? Frankly I’d prefer a pleasant orchard, perhaps over a qaffeh and some Bolo, but I’d honestly settle for any place with some shade. Could you perhaps . . . ?’
The shifter ignored him, jumped off the sled and walked away across the sand. For a minute or so Tsen watched him go but Sivan didn’t look back. With a groan, Tsen got up. His feet hurt. He frowned and scratched his head, trying to remember how to make sleds work. They were enchanter toys. They did what an enchanter wanted because the enchanter wanted it and that was about the extent of what he knew; that and that they were probably a lot less use than they appeared in a place like this. He dimly remembered hearing that the small ones couldn’t fly all that far before they ran out of whatever it was that made them work.
He jumped up and down a bit. The sled wobbled. It was floating over the sand, not resting on it. Still working then, although a fat lot of good that did him. Enchanter constructs worked when he wanted them to work because he carried a black rod. The enchanters made those rods for everyone and each rod was different, a personal thing. They were like keys, unique, and what locks they opened depended on who you were. And he didn’t have his black rod any more. Of course he didn’t. Sivan had taken it. Then again he hadn’t seen Sivan use a rod either. Did that make him an enchanter then?
Well, you could always ask him. Sivan was almost at the top of the nearest dune. Tsen watched as he disappeared over the top.
Or perhaps not.
Tsen stood there for a bit, thinking Go and Up as hard as he could and then thinking what a fool he’d look to anyone watching and then what a fool he was for thinking something so stupid. Yes. Probably a whole host of invisible dune people pointing and laughing at you. Although if there were then at least they might know where to find some water. He was parched. Sand had crept into his ill-fitting too-tight black silks too. It itched.
He sat down again. He was sweating and there was no shade. The sled was made of glass and no use. He got up again and very deliberately scanned the horizon in case somehow he’d missed something, but there wasn’t anything to see except the rolling dunes and one set of footprints leading up the nearest rise. See? Now if there were invisible dune people, then that’s how you’d know. They’d leave tracks.
The only tracks were Sivan’s. Tsen closed his eyes and took a deep breath and sighed. He really didn’t want to climb the dune, really didn’t, but the only other choice seemed to be to stay where he was and see what happened first: whether he roasted to death or died a parched husk. He sighed again, dropped off the sled and started to follow the footprints. He was probably being stupid. Sivan hadn’t gone to all that trouble just to drop him into the storm-dark so he presumably wasn’t going to leave him to die in the desert either; presumably he was off getting some shelter and water and other useful things and so presumably he was coming back. Presumably. Unless the shifter meant him to follow and just hadn’t bothered to say so.
Thoughts of rescue bubbled up, of escape and flight, all of them utterly stupid. He had absolutely no idea where he was except that he was somewhere in the Empty Sands, and what he did know was that the Empty Sands had earned their name. They ran almost the entire width of Takei’Tarr, from Cashax in the north to the Lair of Samim and in places right to the sea in the south. From east to west they were a bit smaller – a mere handful of hundreds of miles from the Godspike in the east westward as far as the escarpment of the Tzwayg, which, if he could be bothered to imagine such things mattered just now, might be considered the start of the foothills of the Konsidar. Since the Tzwayg and the eastern Konsidar were every bit as dry and dead as the sand sea, he reckoned the distinction was irrelevant. Good to know he remembered his geography though. All those years trying not to learn anything. Must have had a good tutor back in Cashax. Maybe if he wasn’t dead a year from now then he could go back and thank him. Tell him how knowing the exact extent of the Empty Sands had really raised his spirits when he was stuck in the middle of them . . .
Oh just shut up.
Halfway up the dune and he was already gasping. Bloody sand. He’d spent a good deal of his youth in Cashax, roaring around the desert on the back of a sled, wadi racing and generally making an arse of himself. He’d learned a lot about sleds and how fast they could go and how to corner them and skim them across the face of a dune. He tried to remember whether he’d accidentally learned anything useful about surviving out here. If he had, it was largely to try very hard not to have to.
Well, that’s useful then.
Yes. Almost as useful as illeistic sarcasm.
Actually, that wasn’t strictly . . .
Looking for features in the sand wasn’t going to help because there weren’t any. He probably knew the desert as well as anyone who didn’t actually live there, and the sum of what he knew was that it was mostly made up of great big sand dunes with other bits scattered around like careless sprinkles on a hurriedly decorated cake: flats of gravel and of a milky-white power like crushed glass and a few stretches of hard red clay that the desert men claimed had once been lakes in the long-ago before the half-gods broke the world. He clearly wasn’t in any of those, and even if he climbed a dune to find one staring him in the face, he hadn’t the first idea how that was supposed to help him because they all looked the same. Oh, look, a large flat expanse of red clay. Must be a dried-up lake bed. Pat yourself on the back for being clever for a moment before you go back to dying of thirst. Something like that.
From the air he’d sometimes seen what looked like lines in the sand, or maybe under it. The shadows of old roads, said the desert men, but from the ground they were invisible. Nothing much lived here. Spiders. Scorpions. Snakes now and then. Skimming the dunes around Cashax, he’d once come across a nest of tiny silver ants with ridiculously long legs. If he was lucky maybe he might see a desert hawk. Magnificent birds, but that wouldn’t be much consolation when he was stretched out dead. Maybe he’d be eaten by one. There were probably better ways to go.
What? Like dying quietly of old age in your bath fifty years from now with Kalaiya by your side and the taste of apple wine on your lips? Already forget that your dragon burned a city, did you? Forgot that everyone wants you hanged?
He deserved this. He deserved to die out here for what he’d done.
I tried to stop it! He waited a bit to see if his conscience was having that, but no, apparently not. You were trying to be clever and you messed it up, but hey, you tried to stop it. Well done. Clap clap clap. THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE BURNED!
He spent another few minutes arguing with himself about just how much everything either was or wasn’t his fault, which kept him going until he reached the top of the dune. Sivan was waiting a few yards down the leeward side, just out of sight.
‘You could hav
e stayed with the sled, you know,’ said the shifter.
‘Now you tell me.’ Tsen looked around for any sort of weapon but there was only sand and the sea of dunes. Sivan picked himself up.
‘What do you know that makes them want you so badly, T’Varr?’
Despite being lost in the desert, despite his fallen eyrie and the fleet of Vespinese ships that had taken it from him, despite Kalaiya left behind – or perhaps because of all those things – Baros Tsen T’Varr laughed. ‘I know a great many things. I have made it my business to see that while Lord Shonda aimed his lightning at me, I had lightning enough to aim back. You don’t imagine I’m going to tell you, do you?’
‘Didn’t see this though, eh?’ The young man laughed.
‘Why are we here, out in the middle of the desert? Where are you taking me?’
‘Somewhere safe and out of the way.’ Sivan set off again. At least sliding down the lee side of the dune was easier than climbing. How long since he’d gone walking in the dunes? He’d done it as a boy and a couple of times in his younger years with Vey Rin – rich young men riding their sleds, dressed up in their glass-and-gold armour, scouting for the slavers that struck out into the desert now and then from Cashax. Older now, wiser and knowing a little more of the world and its consequences, he found himself ashamed of almost everything he’d done during those years in Cashax, but most of all of the time he’d scouted for the slavers. He’d been so painfully ignorant.
He slid down the sand, almost falling. He caught himself. Sivan was already ahead again, starting up the next slope.
‘Is there an end to this?’ Tsen called after him. ‘Or are we just walking for the sake of it?’
