Faeril and Gwylly embraced the Gjeenian and kissed him on the cheek, and the buccan said, “Take care, Halíd Realmsman, for we depend upon you. And, oh my friend, I will miss you.”
’Mid irritated hronks Halíd mounted up. Riatha stepped forward. “Our journey ahead is long and arduous and will take time, as will thine own, Halíd. Yet if nought else we will try to get word to Caer Pendwyr within the coming year. If the year expires in silence, then thee and thine must decide what to do, if aught, for like as not we will be dead.”
Riatha stepped back and raised her hand. “May Adon ride with thee.”
Halíd unfastened his turban cloth from across his face and smiled and held up his own hand and said, “And may the strength of Adon be in your blades and may the hand of Elwydd shield you.” The Realmsman then refastened the scarf and turned and rode away from the verge of the Kandrawood, riding his own dromedary, Reigo’s in tow behind. Up the slope and to the slot he went, where he paused and waved to all, and they waved back. Then the Realmsman disappeared into the notch.
* * *
Two days later, on the first day of December, the five companions broke camp, for Faeril had recovered to the point that Riatha deemed the damman fit for travel.
Before setting out, Faeril stepped to the center of the Ring of Dodona. “Farewell, O Oracle of mine. I shall not forget you.”
Only the rustle of leaves overhead answered her, and she stepped from the ring and into the sound of falling water.
Her companions waited for her, and when she came forth, all mounted their camels and rode up and away, passing through the narrow crevice connecting the crescent-shaped gorge to the outside world.
Facing into a hot wind blowing from south and west, they urged the complaining, sneering beasts forward, riding for Nizari, the Red City of Assassins, some twelve hundred miles distant across the mighty Karoo.
CHAPTER 32
Prey
Autumn, 5E989
[The Present]
Deep in the mountains in the pit of the night high in the tower of the ancient mosque, Stoke ceased pacing long enough to glare out over the Talâk Range, seeing nought of consequence in the moonless dark. Stars wheeled through the black vault above, but the Baron did not use his high vantage to admire them. Instead, he resumed his caged striding, as if impatient for his Chūn to return, bringing with them fresh new victims, victims to fulfill his desires. Yet sating his needs was not at the root of his agitation. Nay! Far from it! Rather, he was pacing in fear and rage, for just moments before he had discovered that they were coming….
* * *
In his Psukhomanteîon, Stoke lit the last black candle and set it in the fifth equidistant position on the chalked circle, the wavering yellow light adding to the glow from the other four, all joining the ruddy cast coming from the hot coals in the hammered iron brazier in one corner of the chamber. In circle center lay the corpse—flayed, abdomen bursted outward, entrails showing—its head aligned with the first candle, its arms outflung, hands pointing at candles two and three, its legs splayed apart, feet pointing at candles four and five. Once it had been a Human; now it was a thing.
Positioned between the spraddled legs but standing outside the circle, Stoke summoned his energies and began the incantation: “Ákouse mè!…”
Command after command he voiced, each one taking more energy, more power, sapping his strength, draining his will. Yet finally…
“…Egò gàr ho Stókos dè kèleuo sé,” came the last command, Stoke straining with effort merely to utter the final words.
As with other corpses in other places, from the mouth of this one, too, came a myriad of whispering voices, all speaking simultaneously, ebbing and flowing, crowding inward, fading outward, all answering the questions of the Psukhómantis, all answers different, for all times and places were the same to the dead.
Castle…glacier…Wee Ones…bartizan…desert…Elf…wyrm…death…Bear…spear…child…Uâjii…Avagon…Man…Arden…Greatwood…Rwn…Realmsmen…Atala…oceans…Elfess…sword…drapes…crystal…Falídii…hissed ten thousand mutterers, their answers commingling, murmurings running together.
Stoke listened carefully to separate out the one voice, yet he had chosen a fresh corpse, his latest victim, and he phéme—the prophetic voice—of the dead thing in the circle was stronger than that of the rest. And when that voice fell silent at last, Stoke stood shaken.
He had not lost his pursuers; they were after him still! And even now they crossed the Karoo, journeying towards Nizari.
* * *
…And high in the minaret Stoke paced back and forth in fear, enraged that they were the predators and he the prey. Again he paused, looking north and east, as if willing his sight to fly beyond the mountains and over the desert and unto his relentless enemies.
Of a sudden he spun away, cursing, and hurtled down the spiral stairs and underground, striding through red-marbled corridors, coming at last to the workbench in his laboratory. Striving to calm his thoughts and conceive a fitting plan for those who pursued, he took up the work where he had last left off, focusing his mind on perfecting his latest…instrument.
Golden it was, some three inches, in diameter and thirty inches long, tapering to a hideous point on one end, an anchoring plate on the other. Carefully he measured, scribing short longitudinal lines in the gold where each of the many razor-sharp triangular blades would be embedded blades to be set ’round the shaft and down its length. Here and there he also marked places where he intended to inset gems—bloodstones in particular.
When he had finished marking the gold, a plan had formed in his mind, and he set the grotesque auric stake aside and raced back to the minaret and up, and raged out into the night: “Now will the hunters become the hunted, now the predators the prey!” his shouted words echoing from the mountains ’round, Stoke laughing madly at the sound of his own voice reverberating—hunters…hunted…predators…prey.
* * *
The following eve as twilight dimmed into utter night, from the minaret a hideous creature launched itself into the gathering darkness, its wide leathery wings bearing it toward Nizari.
CHAPTER 33
Mai’ûs Safra
Autumn, 5E989
[The Present]
A hot quartering wind at his back, Halíd and his hajînain trotted across the desert, retracing their steps of the weeks past, travelling northward, drifting slightly easterly, racing for Sabra some four hundred forty miles away.
All morning Halíd kept up the pace, switching from one hajîn to the other every hour or so, the sneering dromedaries protesting at every change. Over rough terrain he transferred more often; over smooth, less frequently. Running at the speed that the camels could sustain over the given terrain, by the time they stopped at midday they had covered more than thirty miles.
Halíd and the beasts rested in the hot wind throughout the heat of the day. In mid-afternoon Halíd mounted up once more, and off they trotted, resuming the trek.
The scorching breeze continued to press upon them, driving them before its steady blow. At least it’s at our backs.
The hours fled by, the Sun sliding down the western sky, and as the short desert evening came and went, night following, onward across the dunes and rocks ran the hajînain, their steady trot consuming miles. With the coming of nightfall, Halíd had expected the wind to abate, but it did not, and its breath blew warm upon them.
Halfway between sunset and mid of night, they passed the basin wherein was the Well of Uâjii. The dromedaries smelled the water and would have gone to it, but Halíd did not permit them to. Shouting hronks of dismay, onward the hajînain ran, and soon the Well was behind Halíd, though not the memories of Reigo’s death.
Another six hours they pressed northward, Halíd stopping at last in barren dunes to sleep and let the camels rest. All told, some ninety-two miles they had gone, running for twenty-one hours. At this rate, in five days they would reach Sabra, one day ahead of the final day, could h
e and the hajînian keep up the pace.
And still the southwest wind blew, though now it was chill.
* * *
After but a bare three hours of sleep, Halíd awakened. Dawn was in the eastern sky. The Realmsman considered the southwest wind as he ate a small amount of food and drank a large amount of water. An ill omen, this. It has blown for a day or more. May Rualla, Mistress of the Wind, decide it has been enough.
Halíd roused the dromedaries and set out northward again, across endless barren sand, the hajînian complaining mightily, for they had neither eaten nor drunk since leaving the crescent gorge.
North they trotted, across the sculpted dunes, the hot wind rising at their backs.
Again in the heat of midday they stopped and rested, while all about them the wind stirred the sand, bearing the finest grains up and away, Halíd pulling his scarf closely across his face, dozing, trying to rest.
After three hours, once more they hurried northward, Halíd switching from hajîn to hajîn, and when they finally stopped in the wee hours of darkness, they had covered another ninety-eight miles, and still the wind blew.
* * *
On the third day of travel they entered rugged terrain, and when they reached the dunes again and stopped at last for the night, they had covered only fifty more miles. Even so, over the three days they had run some two hundred forty miles in all, and were but two hundred miles from their goal.
But the wind yet blew, and the next day, within an hour of setting out across the Erg, a wall of blackness howled out from the southwest, borne upon the squalling air.
Halíd dismounted and pulled the dromedaries through the dark, scouring wind and down into the scant protection of a dune, shouting “Raka! Raka!” above the shrieking yowl, commanding them to kneel, the Man taking his own shelter against the flank of one of the beasts, covering his full face with his scarf.
Endlessly the howling sand whelmed upon them, the dune drifting against them, threatening to bury Man and beast alike. But squinting against the hurtling sand, Halíd moved the camels, then moved them again, struggling to maintain control of the creatures.
He knew not how long the shrieking blast had blown, but faintly, above the yawling there came a different sound, the sound of endlessly rumbling thunder. Halíd pulled his scarf down from one eye, peering out as the crescendo grew louder, and of a sudden a huge black whirling column loomed out from the darkness and roared down upon them. Sand demon! Halíd’s mind shrieked, even though he knew that it was but a fable—but then the black, spinning wind was upon them, howling so loud as to deafen, unimaginable strength tearing at them, hammering, battering, wrenching, lifting…then it was gone onward, thundering away.
Gone, too, was one of the camels.
* * *
Some ten hours all told did the shrieking wind roar across the Erg, but then it began to diminish, rapidly fading away, until there was nought but silence left in its wake.
Halíd dug out from under a layer of sand, peering ’round. There was no sign of the missing camel, but at hand was the remaining one—Reigo’s former mount.
“Kâm! Kâm!” shouted Halíd, stepping to the saddle and mounting as the beast reluctantly complied. “It is just you and me, sabîyi. Just you and me.”
Turning the nose of the hajîn northward, off once more they set, running for Sabra, some one hundred ninety-five miles away.
* * *
They came upon the Oasis of Falídii in the late afternoon, two hours before sunset. Halíd turned inward, riding to the waterhole. After the dromedary had drunk its fill, the Realmsman hobbled it and set it to graze. Halíd took the remaining goatskin and refilled it, then shed his clothes and washed himself clean in the pool. He was weary, yet he had far to go and but little time left. Even so, he waited until the Sun was halfway below the horizon ere riding forth from the oasis, for, remembering Aravan’s words, he did not wish to remain here after darkness. It was, after all, a Djado place. What made it so, he knew not. And how they had escaped evil while camped in its embrace on the journey down to the Ring of Dodona, he did not know. Yet he speculated that perhaps the blue stone amulet had some such to do with them remaining unmolested, even though the stone had proved of less worth at the Well of Uâjii.
Regardless, Halíd now had no stone of warding, and so he rode away from the oasis and into the Erg. And even as he rode outward, the Sun set and the hair on the back of his neck rose, as if something behind were watching, something maleficent.
“Hut, hut, hut!” he called out to the hajîn, but for once the dromedary needed no urging as it bolted forth.
* * *
When they stopped in the glancing light of the setting Moon, they had gone only forty miles in all. It was the end of the fourth day of travel, and they were now two hundred eighty miles from the crescent gorge.
There were just two days left and one hundred sixty miles to go, and Halíd now had but one camel.
* * *
The next day, the fifth day, they crossed again into rugged terrain, and that night when they stopped, they had gone only another seventy miles.
* * *
The sixth and final day found Halíd and the dromedary back in the dunes of the Erg, the Realmsman pushing the beast to its sustainable limits. Across the sands they raced, up and down the long, drifting slopes. And when came the noontide, Halíd did not stop as he had been doing, for altogether they had ninety miles to go that day and even though it was like travelling in a furnace, onward they went, the flagging beast trotting across the burning sand.
Night fell, and ahead they pressed, over the endless dunes ‘neath a bright yellow gibbous Moon. And when mid of night came, they were yet some twenty miles distant from Sabra. Halíd knew not when the tides flowed, yet he did know that now Captain Legori and the Bèllo Vènto were free to sail on the next one.
“Hut, hut!” he called to the camel, but the weary beast could go no faster. Through the moonlight they trotted and over the lip of a high dune, and of a sudden the beast pitched forward, the sand beneath its feet giving way, and down the slope they slid, sand enveloping them, the dune behind cascading upon them. But it was not the avalanche of sand coming after that was covering them, instead it was the collapsing sand at their feet, for the hajîn had stepped into a sink hole and, camel bellowing in terror, both Man and beast were being sucked under and buried alive!
Even as the animal sank, Halíd scrambled up the camel’s back and leapt outward, landing on the slope of the funnelling sand, his feet and legs scrabbling for purchase, the Realmsman clawing upward even as the cascade drew him backward toward death. On he went and up, barely ahead of the collapsing sand, gaining the rim of the funnel and out to safety at last. He stumbled some distance away and fell to his hands and knees. And when he turned and looked back, sand yet slithered down…but of the camel there was no sign.
Tumbling through Halíd’s mind again were the childhood legends of the evil demons who lurk under the sands, waiting for innocent victims to draw them down unto suffocating death.
After long moments, wearily Halíd got to his feet and set out across the dunes, trudging toward Sabra, twenty miles away.
* * *
Just after dawn, a dirty, disheveled, exhausted Man staggered out of the Karoo and in through the city gates of the desert port of Sabra. He had no water, no food, no camel, having lost all to the sands of the Erg. Yet he had survived the mai’ûs safra—the desperate journey—and inward he stumbled and wearily made his way down toward the harbor, toward the quays. When he got there he asked a dock worker the whereabouts of the harbormaster, and was directed towards a portly Man overseeing the offloading of a white stallion down the ramp of a three-masted dhow and onto the quay, a group of admiring shaikhîn gathered ’round the prancing animal. The exhausted Man, Halíd, approached the harbormaster and spoke to him. The master drew back somewhat from this filthy wretch and pointed out to sea. There sailing away from the anchorage against the turning tide fared the Bèllo V
ènto.
Rage flashed over Halíd, and he cursed at the sky, the harbormaster backing away in alarm. The Realmsman looked about wildly, then bulled past these desert chieftains and knocked aside the groom leading the stallion, leaping upon its bare back and thundering away northward, crying, “Yah! Yah!” racing through the city streets and out the north gate, shouts of pursuit lost in the distance behind.
Up along the headland he ran, galloping in full, racing for the promontory a mile or so away. In moments, it seemed, he had reached the high point, hauling the stud to a skidding halt, the horse squatting on its haunches to stop, dirt flying, dust boiling upward. The Realmsman leapt from the blowing stallion and wrenched his curved knife from its scabbard, turning the gleaming blade into the early morning Sun, light glancing from the glittering steel.
Long he stood on the promontory, holding the blade out horizontally before him, shifting and turning it in the bright rays. And as he heard an angry mob of people rushing up the hillside after him, he saw the Bèllo Vènto heel over in the wind and come about.
Captain Legori had finally seen the Realmsman’s flashing signals.
CHAPTER 34
Crossing
Late 5E989 to Early 5E990
[The Present]
Straight into the teeth of the hot southwestern wind rode Aravan and Faeril on one hajîn, Riatha and Gwylly on a second, and Urus on the gelding, each dromedary trailing two pack camels after. Out into the Erg they fared, aiming now for an oasis marked on Riatha’s map, an oasis some one hundred forty miles hence, a journey of perhaps some four days. It was but the first way station on their long trek, the distant goal being Nizari, the Red City set on the far rim of the Karoo, eleven hundred miles away as the raven flies. But their plan called for travel of some twelve hundred miles in all, their route zigzagging from oasis to waterhole to well for their passage across the sand.
The Eye of the Hunter Page 46
