“I…usually get some help to do that,” said Meryem cautiously. “But I'll give it a try.”
Meryem struggled for a short while to maintain a steady foot in the stirrup. With a little help from the nearest memluk to her, she mounted her horse.
“Now you look like a real horseman!” Sania hooted. “Ready for a race?”
Meryem looked alarmed. “What race?”
“To Burdi. The town is only two miles away, the captain says.”
Meryem gazed at the vacant horizon. “I see nothing ahead.”
“That's the best part. Come on! When was the last time you mounted a horse in a boundless area like this?”
“That could be dangerous, milady!” Dawood nudged his horse onward and stopped it next to Sania's. “Please, there is no need for this.”
“I'm sure you and your men can catch up with two ladies, Captain.” Sania glanced at Meryem to make sure she was steady on her beast. “Ready, old girl?” she teased her sister-in-law.
Meryem gave a nervous chuckle.
Sania nudged her horse into a trot, giving Meryem a chance to keep pace with her. But Sania was impatient to fly in this endless desert. It had been impossible for her to ride a horse at its full speed within the walls of the castle of Arkan.
Meryem didn't look comfortable with her horse. “Slow down, Sania,” she said as Sania was cantering already. “Forget the stupid race. I'm out of it.”
What race? Sania had almost forgotten Meryem's presence. Her mind was busy recalling all the instructions she had learned in her horse riding lessons. She was told how to gallop, but she had never tried it. If she harmed herself today, she might be locked up in Arkan for good.
Sania leaned forward, slightly raising her body from the saddle, maintaining a firm grip on the reins. When she pressed with her legs, the horse went faster. She kept pressing, and the beast kept increasing its pace.
She was flying now.
Behind her by a decent distance, Meryem squealed, but Sania didn't bother slowing down to understand what the panicky girl was saying. Maybe Sania should return to her…after she was done flying.
The memluks caught up with Sania, galloping on both sides. She pressed more with her legs to outpace them.
“Slow down, Lady Sania! I beg you!” Sania heard Dawood's voice coming from her right, but she kept her eyes fixed on the town appearing on the horizon. There was no fun in rivaling those horsemen. She had better spread her wings and race with those ravens heading to the town. She had never felt alive as she did at this very moment.
“Lady Sania!” Dawood cried. “The horse needs to rest!”
While Sania wished she could fly forever, unfortunately, Dawood was right. Pushing her butt down, she sat up straight, moved her knees away from the saddle flap, and pushed her heels down. Keeping her legs on her horse's sides, she gave a firm tug on the reins, and then loosened them again. The beast was stronger than the mare she rode in Arkan, and for a moment she felt like crying for help, but at last her horse responded and slowed down to a canter. Yes, yes! You're mine now!
When she reached the town, she realized that she had left Meryem behind by a whole mile, maybe more, forcing the memluks to split themselves into two groups. And there was still the camel and his master. While waiting for Meryem, Sania entertained herself by walking her horse around Dawood and his men.
“That was enough for today, Lady Sania.” Dawood followed her. “I have a family in Kahora.”
“For today, Captain.” Sania hadn't got enough, but the poor captain might have a heart attack if she went for another run.
Meryem arrived on her trotting horse. “You must have lost your mind, foolish girl!” she blustered.
Sania gestured to her to calm down. They shouldn't quarrel in front of Dawood and his men.
“You scared me to death!” Meryem shrieked.
“That's a shame. Don't tell me you didn't enjoy the ride, old girl.” Sania grinned. “Come on, let's find our house.”
Dawood led them to the other side of the small town, away from the buzz of the marketplace. Sania gaped at the palm trees towering over the lone one-story house. The only trees she had seen that tall were those of the castle of Arkan; trees that had an army of gardeners in Arkan taking good care of them. What about the trees of an abandoned house?
“The tales about her were true, apparently,” Sania muttered as she dismounted outside the house.
With Dawood's help, Meryem joined her on foot. “What tales? And about whom?”
“Princess Nelly.” Sania watched Dawood unlock the oak door. “The sister of my Rusakian grandmother.”
“She must be the one behind that fair skin and auburn hair.” Meryem grinned, playing with Sania's hair.
“Unfortunately Feras wasn't that lucky.” Sania laughed. “He is dedicated to his grandfather's path as you see.”
“So, what are those tales?”
The oak door creaked when Dawood pushed it open.
“She was a sorceress.” Sania sighed. “That's why she was kept here.”
Meryem's jaw dropped. “That's one of your silly jokes, isn't it?”
Sania wasn't joking, and neither did the abandoned palm trees, the legacy of the mysterious Lady Nelly.
Sania waited for Dawood's men to finish inspecting the house from inside to make sure it was safe for the two noble ladies. “What if we encounter a demon here?” Meryem asked warily. “This house must have become haunted after all those years.”
“Don't be stupid. Demons only exist in the Great Desert.” Sania hoped that fact was true. She couldn't deny she was a bit afraid about entering a sorceress's house, but her curiosity overcame her fear. “You know what you should fear for real, snakes and rats.”
The memluks stepped out of the house when they were done with their important task. Sania took a torch from them and entered the dimly lit reception hall, urging the hesitant Meryem to join her.
“Seriously, what are you looking for in this place?” Meryem kept looking around as she entered.
“Something more interesting than poetry books.” Sania scanned the place. For an uninhabited house, the furniture was not in a bad condition at all, even less dusty than her own bedchamber. Somebody—hopefully, not something—must be attending to the house of the late Lady Nelly. A shiver ran down Sania's spine at the thought. “A sorceress's house should be full of peculiar, interesting things, right?”
Other than the peculiar cleanness of the house from inside, Sania didn't find anything interesting. Even this cleanness didn't seem to have anything to do with sorcery. The late Nelly might have found a way to perfectly seal the gaps that might let in dust and sand.
Sania was astonished when she found Nelly's jewelry in her bedchamber. All those years and none of her family had thought of collecting those precious items and taking them back to the castle. The unguarded house would make a great prize for burglars. Unless they knew it was guarded already.
“You think of what I'm thinking?” Sania asked Meryem.
“You mean the jewels? That's a bad idea, Sania. You can never know what sort of a curse she casted on these things.”
“Who said I can never know?” Sania picked a diamond necklace and hung it around her neck. “How do I look?”
“You look cursed to me.” Meryem shook her head.
“Silly old girl.” Sania went out of the bedchamber and searched the other rooms. If Lady Nelly had been a sorceress for real, she must have assigned a particular chamber to practice her forbidden hobby.
“Alright. We had enough of this ride today,” said Meryem. “Let's start our journey back to Arkan before the night falls.”
“After this one.” Sania opened the door of the last chamber, and from one quick glance, it looked like the rest of the rooms in the house. A few chairs and a table in the middle, and adjacent to the wall facing the door was that cupboard…
“Are you done now? Let's get out of here.” Meryem held her by the arm.
“Wai
t.” Sania pushed away Meryem's hand. That wasn't a cupboard for utensils and all those absurd belongings she had found; that was Lady Nelly's library. The secrets of the mysterious sorceress must be hidden in those scrolls and books.
“Hold this for me.” Sania handed Meryem the torch since she needed both hands to pull one huge book from the shelf, so heavy that she quickly let it land on the table. The book title, CHEMISTRY, was written in big, bold Goranian characters on the hard cover. As Sania browsed the book and saw those symbols and figures and arrows, she realized how absurd this idea was.
She grabbed another book, a smaller one, written in a tongue she couldn't comprehend. “Ancient Rusakian?” she guessed. She put it on the table and picked more books. Many of them were written in Ancient Rusakian, only five in Goranian: Weapons and Poisons, The Science of Body, The Secrets of Boris the Wise, and of course, Tales of Gorania. The last book was dated to the thousandth summer.
She nodded. “Our search wasn't in vain.”
Meryem gave the books a quick look. “Still, sewing is more interesting. Who would want to read those Tales again? We had enough when we were children.”
“I'm talking about these.” Sania nodded toward the Rusakian books. “I'll ask Feras to find us a tongue tutor.”
“You want to learn a new tongue to be able to read these books?” Meryem raised her eyebrows. “That's a long way, Sania.”
Sania shrugged. She had all the time in the world. “We will need Dawood's help to…” Turning to the door, she eyed the bow lying on a stone shelf next to the door. How hadn't she noticed it when she entered?
“What was she?” Sania muttered as she approached to have a look from a closer range. “A sorceress? A scholar? A huntress?”
“Maybe it's not hers,” Meryem offered.
Sania had once tested the weight of a bow and how tight the bowstring could be. “It is hers.” She held Nelly's bow with one hand like the archers she saw in her castle and pulled the bowstring with the other. “It is crafted for feminine arms. I'm taking it.”
“You are not short of cursed items, reckless girl.”
Sania hung the bow onto her shoulder. “I'm already cursed behind the walls of Arkan, Meryem.” She scanned the room one more time to make sure she hadn't missed any worthy item. “Let's call Dawood to carry these books for us.”
CHAPTER FIVE
MASOLON
Right after sunrise, Masolon rode his horse to the agreed upon place to find seven Murasen horsemen waiting there. Kuslov showed up shortly thereafter and waved to them to follow him outside Kahora. Having no idea where they were going or for what purpose, Masolon expected to know more details from the tracker. He spurred his stallion onward, going past his fellows to reach Kuslov at the front of the pack.
“Not now,” Kuslov said before Masolon could even pose his question.
Behind them, the walls of Kahora disappeared and now it was only the desert surrounding them. But this desert was not the Great Desert. Nothing was like the Great Desert. Here at least he could glimpse a hill or a palm tree every few miles, a lizard or a snake creeping across the sand, a shadow of an eagle hovering over their heads. But in the Great Desert, nothing alive existed. No whistles of dusty wind that would scrape the skin of your cheeks, not even a rock to blotch the dull yellow painting with any color. If death had a color, it would be yellow. If death had a sound, it would be silence.
Kuslov stopped at a hill ten miles away from the city, wheeling his horse to face his band of men. “Boys, we have been hired to rescue someone's son from the hands of a gang of nomads. If any one of you feels uncomfortable about this mission, he can return to Kahora at once.”
“Who hired us?” one of the men asked, his voice a bit high-pitched.
“Someone who will pay us well if we bring his son back.” Kuslov glanced at the other horsemen and added, “Alive, of course.”
They laughed, but the man with the high-pitched voice didn’t. “I hope he does. Them gangs usually ask for ransoms not far from reasonable.”
Kuslov gave him a cold stare. “If I say he will pay us well, then he will. Rescuing our hirer's son is all you must worry about.” He turned to his small army. “Any more concerns?”
“Where are we heading?” another horseman asked.
“Where I believe I can find those bastards,” Kuslov replied impassively. “I have my reasons to believe they are somewhere near the city of Demask.”
No one else uttered another word. Kuslov shot his men an inquiring look as if he was making sure they were done asking. “Good. Let’s go.”
Masolon kept his horse cantering next to Kuslov’s, nothing ahead or behind except the sand. It was always the sand since Masolon had started his journey to Gorania. Sand in the Great Desert, sand in Kahora, sand between Kahora and Demask.
“Is it all desert here?” he dared to ask the tracker.
“Sand is the most thing you are going to see in Murase, foreigner,” replied the tracker, his eyes scanning the terrain around them.
“What about the other realms?”
This time the tracker furrowed his brow and turned to Masolon. “You should know the answer if you are from one of those other realms. If you haven’t been there already, you should see the green Bermanian fields, the snow lands of Durberg, the rainy coasts of Kalensi, and the rocky mountains of Sergrad.”
“Snow?” Masolon had never seen it in his life. “How far are these lands?”
“It all depends. If you are traveling with a caravan, you will probably avoid the Mankols’ territories, and after eight days you will see the first snowflake. But if you are on your own and reckless enough to head north directly, you will only need three days to cross Mankola, provided you use the Skandivian map to make sure you don’t get lost in the middle of nowhere.”
Masolon hadn’t used a map to cross Si’oli. And even if he had one, it wouldn’t do him any good in the heart of nothingness. He had only survived that crossing because he was destined to. Everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by chance, his grandfather had always told him. Trusting the queer games of destiny was the only option Masolon had.
“I see you rely on no map,” Masolon remarked.
“Maps are for green travelers like you.” Kuslov gave him a mocking grin. “For the seasoned ones, the sun and the stars are enough.”
“You must have traveled a lot until you learned how every grain of sand looks.”
“I don’t know how every grain of sand looks, but they all know me.”
Masolon’s ignorance about Gorania was the only reason for him to tolerate Kuslov’s arrogance, hoping the veteran tracker might say something useful. Yet his patience was not endless. “Even the sands of the Great Desert?”
Kuslov's eyes widened when he heard the Goranian name of Si'oli. “The Great Desert is where our world ends, young man.” He looked over his shoulder then he said to Masolon, “The folks riding behind us don’t love talking too much about the residents of those cursed lands.”
“You say you never passed through those cursed lands?” The right side of Masolon’s mouth quirked in a smile of victory.
“No man has,” Kuslov replied a bit defensively. “Those who tried to reach the Other Side never returned.”
“My grandfather did return.”
Shaking his head in disbelief, Kuslov said, “You can never know if he told you the truth. You were not with him when he returned, were you?”
“I was not.” Masolon wasn’t even born at that time. “But he brought me something from your lands. Your tongue.”
“Our tongue?” Kuslov narrowed his eyes. “Where are you exactly from?”
“As Bumar told you, from a very faraway rural place.” Masolon enjoyed teasing him. Now the cocky tracker realized he was not any longer the one who knew everything here.
Their conversation ended at that point and Kuslov busied himself with the inspection of the surrounding terrain. In a short while the tracker raised his hand, and the horseme
n behind him slowed down until they all stopped. He dismounted and bent over some faint hoof prints. “Same tracks I spotted at the kidnapping site,” he announced. “Fourteen, all mounted.”
“Fourteen? You knew we were outnumbered from the beginning, didn’t you?” one of the horsemen scowled, his voice holding the tone of a rebuke.
“Aye.” Kuslov simpered. “I didn’t wish to disturb you in your lovely ramble. Now get ready to stain your hands with some blood.”
CHAPTER SIX
MASOLON
Being outnumbered wasn’t something new to Masolon, yet he missed the bow he had lost in his dreadful passage through the Great Desert. Hopefully, he wouldn't need it today.
According to Kuslov, the Master of Trackers, the kidnappers were hiding in a village called Bahna. The peasants had obviously abandoned the unpaved street to flee from the burning sunlight, seeking shelter in their hovels. Masolon doubted they would find anything alive in this dead place if it weren’t for some cackling hens and barking dogs.
“Look at the shut doors and windows.” Mounting his horse, Kuslov contemplated the hovels all around him. “They knew there would be blood the moment they saw us coming.”
It is not the heat then, Masolon thought, gazing at a two-story granary at the end of the street. The window of the second floor would make a perfect spot for an archer to defend that hideout from intruders. “Stop,” Masolon said to Kuslov, but the tracker's response was only a cold stare.
Ignoring Kuslov’s look, Masolon swung down off his saddle and went past the tracker, heading to the granary. He stood for a moment, letting his honed eyes and ears explore the area surrounding the granary, but they found nothing dubious. As he resumed his single march, his ears caught the snapping of a bowstring. In less than a heartbeat, he dove behind some rubble. An arrow hit the very position he had been standing in seconds before.
Lying behind the rubble, Masolon looked for his companions. Kuslov and the other six men had dismounted, and now they were advancing swiftly toward the granary from two directions to distract the window archers. Masolon rose from his hideout and ran as fast as he could toward the granary front door, ignoring the whizzing arrows and crying men. When he reached the door he waited for his companions to join him one after the other, but not all of them made it. One fell down.
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