by Terah Edun
“That is not all.” It was a statement rather than question.
“No, it isn’t,” Ciardis answered ... well aware that she couldn’t tell him any lies. But there were ways around the truth. Evading answers and telling small truths couched in vague assertions was one way.
“We need to get to Kifar and the way we intended to approach has been taken to us,” Ciardis said, “The stronghold is just on the horizon. We can get there with or without you. But I’d greatly prefer your cooperation.”
“As would I yours.”
Ciardis resisted rolling her eyes. Instead she shook her head and wondered how much longer he intended to badger her.
He was silent for a moment. “What are your orders from your emperor?”
Ciardis placed a hand on the stone floor of the ruins and glared. “What are your orders from the city of Kifar?”
He didn’t turn to look at her. She didn’t turn away though. She was tired of being questioned like a suspect rather than given answers as his captor. She was in charge here.
“Listen if you want honesty, you have to be willing to give as well as receive.”
“It is impossible for you lie to one of my people,” he said, “So that statement is false.”
“Not in my opinion,” she pointed out sorely, “Because I can shut my mouth and not say a word.”
Minutes passed until he finally said. “It is our duty to not let the Aerdivus spread. To keep the desert clean.”
Curious Ciardis said, “How?”
“By killing all those who attempt to enter our home,” he said.
“Makes sense,” she muttered flashing back on the skirmish they had fought on the sands. “Ghoulish but sensible.”
“I am glad you agree,” he said in that monotone voice.
She felt goosebumps rise on the back of her neck but she persevered, “Then why did you agree to take us to Kifar? You could have fought to the death. Sacrified yourself. Anything to delay our advance.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.” Ciardis was beginning to wonder if another ambush lay in those dunes. Friends he had been able to forewarn in their trek here or overnight, but she saw no one and nothing living moved in the arid wasteland.
“My purpose for this mission is greater,” he said, “Something threatens our city from within. You are the proof.”
Ciardis thought about what he had just said. “You mean the wyvern?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Tell me about your emperor’s plans,” he commanded without raising his voice.
Ciardis opened and closed her mouth, then she sigh and licked her suddenly dry lips.
“Very well,” she said as she recounted her experiences with the man she knew. “The first thing you need to know is that the emperor is a coldly calculating individual. He will do what is best for the empire above all, even his son’s well-being.”
It wasn’t a lie either. The emperor would turn on Sebastian in a minute and call it a self-sacrifice on behalf of the empire in the meantime, Ciardis thought sarcastically.
She continued aloud, “He sent us to liason with your city, to see how its progress in the half-century of self-quarantine ... and to try to save it despite his sister’s plans....”
Ciardis felt her voice drone on as she almost drifted off into her own memories. As she pulled back and stopped minutes later, she looked in the eyes of the Muareg and saw something she hadn’t seen before. Understanding.
“You hate him,” it said frankly.
“No!” Ciardis said while gasping in shock. “No, that’s not true.”
The Muareg opened his mouth and Ciardis knew he would discount her words as a lie. So she reached out a hand and grasped his urgently.
“Please,” she said. She couldn’t plead more than that, but the request was in her eyes.
He untangled his hand from hers and said no more.
Breathless Ciardis said, “That isn’t something you say aloud.”
The Muareg turned away. “Then life hasn’t much changed from the time when all lived in fear of imperial whims ... whether here in Algardis or across the sea in Sahalia.”
Ciardis shifted uncomfortably, unwilling to have this conversation with a virtual stranger. “Did I answer your question accurately enough about the emperor’s plans?”
“It was satisfactory, Miss Weathervane,” the Muareg said, “I read more into the emotions connected to your words than the phrases themselves uttered.”
Ciardis grimaced. “Then answer one of mine. What did you mean when you said we are the proof you needed?”
He was silent for a moment. “The answer to that lies beyond the doors of my fabled city. I will open its gates for you tomorrow, Ciardis Weathervane. It’s up to you to walk through those doors.”
Ciardis grimaced. She didn’t like cryptic. This whole mission was cryptic and it was getting on her nerves. But she would keep playing the game as long as she had to. Ciardis looked out over the group surrounding her. They all seemed to have taken on some task while she slept the morning away. Terris and Christian were busy conferring over something drawn in the sand as they squatted and pointed with sticks. She didn’t know what it was, but if she had to guess it had something to do with their way into Kifar.
Thanar and Sebastian were standing on a stone ledge looking off in the distance towards the city on the rise. Rachael was standing next to a soldier who was tying and re-tying knots in a complicated rope design. If Ciardis didn’t know any better, she’d say he was showing the shaman how to create a binding lace knot.
Blinking Ciardis stood and stretched with her hands over her head.
Looking down at the Muareg who sat at her feet, she said conversationally, “If you wouldn’t mind, I will join my companions.”
He said nothing and stared silently into the distance.
Ciardis took that as permission to leave and she nodded silently to the guard as she walked off in search of the sole member of their group who was nowhere to be found.
Looking around the dusty ruins, random bits of stone columns and masonry had been thrown around as if a giant’s hand had tossed them indiscriminately, Ciardis reveled for a moment in the quiet morning air. This journey had been simpler and far more complicated than she had ever dreamed.
As she spotted Ambassador Raisa standing on a lone boulder that had somehow found itself inside the ruins of the building, she had to smile. The dragon was standing on top of the boulder with one knee bent forward as if she planned to leap from the top at any time. Her dress flowed around her like silk in the wind and her hair was whipping to the left like a dark spiral. Ciardis walked up to the boulder quietly. It sat in the center of a circle of broken columns, alone except for the occasional sprout of grass coming up from between the broken tiles and the debris from shattered pottery creating a hazardous field she had to wade through.
As she reached the boulder that was taller than her own five-foot frame, Ciardis looked up at the female dragon standing on top who was surveying the world as if she owned it and everything in it.
Hands on her hips, Ciardis, “Well, what’s got you so fascinated?”
Raisa didn’t look down as she said with a smile in her voice. “Do you realize this place has the best sunlight I’ve seen outside of Sahalia? It’s the horizon, I think. It’s endless. Just sun and sky for as far as I can see. Beautiful.”
Ciardis eyed Raisa and looked out on the desert. “That’s one way to put it.”
“And you would describe it another way, sarin?”
Ciardis shrugged. “Dry. Lifeless. Hot as Hell are descriptions that come to mind.”
Chapter 31
This time the dragon’s chuckle was audible. “Our people. My people worship the sun as a goddess. It gives life. It produces crops and feeds our herd. It gives us light and keeps the darkness at bay.”
Ciardis pursed her lips tightly, but she couldn’t really make an argument against that. Plus she had
a general policy not to argue with people about their gods. The most down-and-dirty fights she had ever encountered in the bar at Vaneis were over cheating spouses of both genders and someone’s god being offended, which she had never understood. There was no one powerful enough in her village to ordain a god’s intentions, but they had all certainly tried to speak as if they could.
“So your people believe in a benediction from the sun?” Ciardis mused.
“We believe in a lot of things,” Raisa mused. “Not the least of which is the inferiority of your kind.”
Ciardis glared up at her. “Come again?”
Raisa looked down at her from the boulder finally. “Just seeing if you were actually paying attention.”
“I was!” Ciardis fumed.
“Rest your human mind,” Raisa said, “You’ll need its energy and your fury for when we enter Kifar’s gates.”
“Oh, and why is that?” Ciardis asked. “No wait, there’s something I need to know more urgently.”
“And that is?” Raisa asked as the breeze changed direction ... taking the gauzy fabric of her dress with it.
Ciardis smiled. It was a facial expression that was both sweet and challenging at the same time. “I can’t have this conversation on two levels. So are you coming down here or am I coming up there?”
Raisa’s expression froze for a second as Ciardis watched her think over her words. Then a wry smile graced the dragon’s lips.
Kneeling down on the boulder and reaching out a hand to Ciardis, Raisa said, “Come up if you dare then.”
Ciardis said as she took the dragon’s outstretched hand and put her booted foot on the side of the boulder to gain traction, “You don’t scare me you know.”
“Funny,” said the ambassador, “Everyone else says the opposite. Even the ones who try to laugh and drink away their fear. I still smell it on their skin and in their hair. Like the odor of prey just before your jaw snaps closed on them.”
Ciardis grunted as she was pulled up and gained her balance on the top and faced the dragon head on.
“And me?”
“You,” dragon mused as she pushed strands of hair that had escaped Ciardis’s bun out of her face and behind Ciardis’s ear, “You are one of those that do not fear.”
Ciardis smiled. “It’s a gift.”
“Some would consider a lack of caution a curse.”
“Ah,” said Ciardis with ease, “But fear and caution are not one and the same. I can be cautious while weighing my options without fear.”
“And that tells me something else,” the dragon said with a smile that didn’t reach her cold eyes.
“Which is?”
Raisa turned back to look off into the distance and Ciardis did the same. She was careful not to brush the dragon’s side or unbalance herself enough that she fell off the small boulder.
“That you’re one of the two people in this land that might have the power ... and the mentality I need to make this alliance work,” the dragon said simply.
Ciardis startled. “One of two? What alliance?”
“That isn’t for you to know.”
“Then why did you mention it,” Ciardis snapped.
“You asked.”
“And you answered!” the Weathervane grumbled. “If you won’t tell me what the alliance is, at least tell me who the other person is.”
Raisa said, “Isn’t it obvious?”
Ciardis refrained from snapping that “if it was I wouldn’t be asking.”
Raisa shook her head as they both stared off at the fortress that rose up on its own mountainside in the distance. Even from a distance of a couple miles away Ciardis could see the white walls that surrounded the city on all side. They were perfectly uniform and unbroken as they encircled the city in a perfect arc. There was nothing else between the ruins and the city but sand as far as Ciardis could see.
The sun now peeked from behind the city, giving the walls a gorgeous rose-gold glow.
Ciardis said again, “Who’s the other person?”
Raisa answered, “I’ll humor you, sarin. This once.”
Ciardis turned to look over at Raisa with an untroubled expression. The day was oddly peaceful. She knew it wouldn’t last. They would have to make their way to Kifar from here and come Hell or high water scale its walls. So she savored the peaceful nature around her, the solemn vista before her, and the quiet that surrounded them for a few precious moments.
“Who?” Ciardis asked as she shielded her eyes from a particularly nasty bout of wind filled with sand.
The dragon smiled. “Why, your emperor of course.”
For some reason Ciardis wasn’t surprised at the revelation.
Raisa turned to her then. “So you see, Ciardis Weathervane, my desire to not provoke your ruler is more than ‘good politics’ as your courtiers are so fond of saying. It is critical to the well-being of my entire race.”
Ciardis felt disturbed for a moment. “How so?”
Raisa tapped Ciardis’s lips with a gentle finger. “That, sarin, is for another day. Another time. Another place.”
Ciardis groaned as Raisa nimbly hopped off the boulder to land on her two feet like a cat. “You can’t say that and just leave me here,” Ciardis said in frustration.
“Ah, but I can,” the dragon said with a laugh as she sauntered off to who knows where.
Ciardis snorted and crossed her arms in irritation. Then she turned to look at the horizon once more, but she didn’t see the walled city before her. Not this time.
She stood still on the boulder for a few hours and then turned to scamper down.
Going over to Terris’s side, Ciardis asked, “How long was I asleep?”
“For half the morning,” Terris said while look up at her from where she crouched down in the sand, “But for the most part, we all were.”
Ciardis crouched down next to her and grunted. “I bet you I can guess who wasn’t.”
Terris said, “You might lose that bet.”
Ciardis looked up at her in surprise.
“Sebastian and Thanar seemed to be effected more than anyone else,” Terris said ruefully, “When I got up, they were still fast asleep.”
Ciardis bit her lip and looked around the two. “Where did they go?”
“Scouting,” Terris said while looking around.
Ciardis raised an eyebrow. “For what? The city is just there on the rise. It might take us a day or two of fast walking, but we’ll get there.”
Terris smiled. “There’s one small problem.”
Ciardis narrowed her eyes. “How small?”
Terris pointed down at the diagram she’d drawn in the sand. “See these two rings?”
Ciardis looked over the diagram carefully. There was a peaked triangle close to Terris on the north side. On the south was a bunch of smaller circles in a group. Ciardis guessed that the mountain represented Kifar and their group represented the smaller circles.
Between the mountain and the grouped circles were two very large rings. They were close enough to be touching but just far enough apart to have a small space between the two.
“Yes?” Ciardis said warily.
“Those are two of the biggest desert tribes in the area,” Terris said with a frown.
Ciardis eyed the rings carefully. “And?”
“And they’re known for three things,” Terris said flatly, “Marauding. Fighting. Horse-racing.”
“Just those three things huh?” Ciardis asked faintly.
“Yeah.”
“Wait,” Ciardis said as she peered over at her friend in confusion, “Why didn’t we see them yesterday? And I was just standing on the ridge. I certainly didn’t see anything then.”
Terris shrugged. “They’re there. They might be shielding, we don’t know. But the presence is unmistakable and last night ... well, we arrived pretty late. They might have slid into place under the cover of darkness.”
“Yes,” Ciardis said with a sigh while biting her lip. Something sti
ll felt off.
But she couldn’t pinpoint what, so she asked, “What did the Maureg say about them?”
“The same thing the shaman said,” Terris replied, “They’re trouble with a capital T.”
“But,” Ciardis said while waving at the diagram in frustration, “Why can’t we just get the Muareg to tell them to let us through?”
“Because they’re about as friendly as a snake stuffed in a bag,” Terris said, “And the Muareg are like desert ghosts. They don’t interact with any other groups as far as I can tell. They just kill the travelers.”
“And yet these horse-racing thugs are still alive?” Ciardis said dryly.
Terris rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say it made sense. But as far I can make out from Christian translating the Muareg’s cryptic nonsense and Rachael piping in with her own tribe’s knowledge ... the Muareg only attack foreigners who venture near the city as they have the potential to carry the Aerdivus or spread it or something.”
“So home-born or marauding nutcases aren’t his problem, is what you’re saying?” Ciardis said while giving the Muareg a spiteful look.
Terris reached out and turned Ciardis’s face back to the diagram. “Yep.”
Ciardis sighed. “Okay, why can’t we go around them?”
“Because they spread out to the east and west for miles,” Terris said practically, “Those rings each represent camps of at least five thousand men.”
Ciardis growled in frustration. “Then tell me what in the name of the seven gods they’re doing in the middle of the desert sitting across from each other. Holding a séance?”
Terris shrugged. “Beats me and no one else has any idea either, believe me I’ve asked. We can’t wait them out because we don’t have time, before you even ask.”
Ciardis sighed. “So what’s the plan?”
“We go through them,” Terris said with a devilish smile.
Ciardis nearly choked on her own laughter. “Are you out of your mind?”
Terris said, “Not yet I’m not. Look.”
Ciardis watched as she grabbed a stick and drew a line in the sand straight between the two rings. It was the space where they would have overlapped if they’d just been closer together.
