Sandstorm (single books)

by Christopher Rowe

  Shan nodded, and Cephas said, “Only a fool would use a sword like that. It’s no wonder he lost.” Shan nodded again.

  Cephas indicated that she should close the book. “And this mark here means Djenispool?”

  Corvus said, “It is one way of writing a D, which is the first letter in the word ‘Djenispool.’ ”

  “There is more than one mark for the same letter?”

  “There are a thousand kinds of beings who use writing on this world and those that border it, and they’re divided into untold nations and tribes. They use dozens of scripts to render hundreds of languages. Different marks for D and S, for all the sounds.”

  Cephas stared at Corvus, feeling as much tension as he ever did in combat. He said, “Show me.”

  And over the next days, rolling across the Tethyrian highlands, Corvus began to do just that.

  The Omlarandin Mountains disappeared over the eastern horizon, and the world emptied of any features but grass, thistle, and the occasional lone tree. A day after the circus crossed the gravel track of the Pass Ride, Corvus sent scouts out from the wagon train.

  Shan and Cynda disappeared into the prairie, while Mattias and Trill disappeared into the sky.

  Cephas asked Tobin about the twins, and the big man told him not to worry. “Those women, they come and go, Shan more than Cynda. They are like you-they learned to make an act of what they knew already. They do Corvus’s special work most times.”

  For his part, Cephas kept a heavy schedule, being tutored by Corvus with his books as they traveled and by Tobin in the strongman’s art while they camped at night. Mattias and Corvus still worried that he was too careless about taking short trips across the bare ground, but the heavy rope-soled sandals Cynda found for him muted the siren call of the plain.

  That evening beside the bonfire at the center of camp, Cephas found himself struggling to remember what it had been like to inhabit his cramped cell every day. He had no problem recalling the arena. He returned to attempting to make his arms and shoulders tremble while lifting a feather-light load.

  Mattias sat on his haunches nearby, Trill’s dozing head at one hand and a wooden bucket of water at the other. He dipped a stiff-bristled brush in the bucket, then pulled the wyvern’s upper lip back with his other hand. Trill had made short work of the half-dozen tom turkeys the wagon train scared up during the day. Feathers and gore were stuck between her long, sharp teeth. She let out an occasional low rumble as Mattias scrubbed away at the deadly set of fangs, but never stirred enough to open an eyelid.

  “We’ll see the Spires first thing tomorrow,” Mattias said.

  The ranger peered into his bucket and stirred it a bit before deciding it was still clean enough for another tooth or two.

  “I haven’t traveled the Suretmarch in thirty years,” he said. “But the situation has not changed in all that time. For someone who says the best chance of heaven is a life lived beneath the notice of the gods, Corvus, you’ve managed to steer a narrow course between people who will take stern exception to that view should we fall into their hands.”

  Corvus stood and picked up Mattias’s pail, walked to the edge of the firelight, and poured it out. The ranger gathered his canes and started to rise to refill it, but Corvus motioned him down. Whitey came and took the bucket and disappeared in the direction of the casks that held the communal water supply.

  “A course between these godly people, though,” Corvus said, sitting back down. “As was my intention. Other than crossing two roads and seeing a single barley field gone fallow for three or four years, we haven’t seen a single sign of intelligent life in days.”

  “That’s because you spend all day with Cephas!” said Tobin. The goliath punctuated this by drawing a tin bugle from the pocket of his voluminous polka-dotted pants and sounding a long, discordant note.

  Trill perked up, ready for fight or flight, but when she saw that Mattias was laughing, she settled back down.

  “Funny,” Cephas said. He wasn’t offended. Tobin needed to practice making jokes so he could get better at it.

  “This course wasn’t a hard one,” said Melda. “But the brothers at Barakmordin are close.”

  “And the queens of Tethyr has pointed those holy fools down Ithal Pass at the Banites like a spear for a hundred years,” said Mattias. “Knights of the Platinum Dragon, Tormite soldier priests, and the Crying God’s martyrs, all vying to outdo one another in zealotry and mounting three sorties of heavy cavalry down the Pass Ride every single day. How we managed to cross at a time they wouldn’t spot us is beyond me.”

  “Time and place,” said Melda.

  “As it happens,” said Corvus, “the records I examined in Saradush make me believe that the earthsouled we’re visiting in the Spires are themselves a holy order of sorts. Or they were the last time anyone bothered to record them in the annals of the Shining Helm Herald.”

  The Calishites of Jazeerijah had kept no cults-Corvus claimed this was a product of their enslaved backgrounds, though he did not explain why so few in the circus were worshipful sorts. But the only reading primer to be found among the haphazard collection of volumes the troop carried with them was a slim child’s book of the gods that Mattias had produced without explanation.

  In his slow journey through the book so far, Cephas had learned who Bane and Bahamut the Platinum Dragon were, and if Torm and Ilmater were allied, that gave him a general sense of what their followers must be like. He hoped the earthsouled leaned more toward the teachings of the folk Mattias termed “zealots” than they did the faith of the Black God.

  “They don’t worship a god, precisely,” Corvus said. “Grumbar the Earthlord is my guess. Or, if these folks are of a poetic turn of mind, the King of the Land Below the Roots. He’s an elemental lord, which is supposed to be something different than a god. Don’t ask me to explain the difference, though, because I’ve never found a satisfactory explanation, and not for want of trying.”

  Tobin stood, and Cephas wondered what sort of apprentice humor they would be subjected to next.

  “He watches and guards,” said Tobin, and the whole company quieted and turned to look at the goliath. Even Trill opened her eyes and raised her great head, cocking it sideways as if she heard a faraway call for help from a companion long lost.

  “He keeps the treasures of the earth’s crust secret and holds them in trust for the landwalkers. He bears burdens and does not complain. He pronounces and is not questioned. Air blows away, water flows away, fire burns away, Earth stays. He abides. He endures.”

  Tobin leaned down and took up a handful of dust, then let it fall through his blunt, inelegant fingers. Cephas became conscious that he was hearing quiet. The ground beneath him had ceased its ceaseless song.

  The goliath finished awkwardly. “I–I swear this on stone,” he said, and darted back among the wagons.

  Whitey the Clown was standing on the other side of the fire, Mattias’s pail of fresh water between his arms. His mouth opened wide as he watched his apprentice go.

  He peered at Corvus. “Was that a prayer?”

  Corvus still gazed off toward the wagons but shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “More like a hymn.”

  Mattias reached out and scratched beneath Trill’s chin. “Something memorized by someone born into a faith that preached unquestionable stability,” he said, “and unending resistance to change. Imagine growing up in a faith like that when the center of your art, when what’s in your heart, is improvisation.”

  Cephas listened for the song of the earth.

  The djinni Shahrokh had no need for the pillows and cushions scattered about his inner sanctum, of course, any more than he had any need for a title. But the windsouled genasi, whom Shahrokh and the other djinn of Calimport viewed as something like children, had built their society in mimicry of the human culture they had replaced. Since that human society was an echo-however imperfect-of the glorious culture of the Noble Djinni Calim and his followers, Shahrokh per
mitted the slaves of the windsouled to appoint his apartments with supposed luxuries such as pillows, and permitted the windsouled themselves to call him the vizar of vizars, adviser and factor to Pasha Marod el Arhapan, the genasi who held sway at the head of the city’s fractious leading council.

  The only time he even noticed the numberless pillows was on occasions such as these, when he let the currents of air that formed the bottom half of his body flow at their full strength in a cyclone of elemental power. This meant cushions flew everywhere.

  It also meant Vizar Shahrokh was angry.

  Slaves of a dozen races, their windsouled masters, a few genasi expressing less politically sound elements, and even a few lesser djinn, rushed out of the vizar’s path as he flew through the arched hallways of the el Arhapan manor.

  The palace was a marvel in a city full of architectural marvels. It was not the only castle that floated high above the ruins that made up much of the old human city, but it was the only one that moved according to its master’s will instead of remaining fixed at whatever point its builders had chosen when the final enchantments were laid like cornerstones.

  The palace could not go anywhere-even in a city as chaotic and ever-changing as Calimport that would be too much. Still, the power and influence of the el Arhapans was sufficient to allow them to fly their home endlessly back and forth between the two terrestrial structures that had sparked their ascendancy among the windsouled in the first place-the Djen Arenas.

  Shahrokh had known the current pasha of games all the brief fifty years of the genasi noble’s life, and he firmly believed that Marod would never have directed his floating home anywhere besides the arenas, even if he had the power. Yes, the windsouled were something like children in the eyes of the djinn, and children needed their toys.

  Sweeping into the great central courtyard, Shahrokh spared a glance downward. The flagstones that made up the courtyard’s surface were clearer than any glass the craftsmen of this wretched world could dream of producing. Like much of the material that went into building Calimport-Upper Calimport, the Calimport that mattered-these blocks of crystalline air were brought from the djinn’s home in the Elemental Chaos. The stones were quarried from the cliffs of Khamsin and transported to the mortal world under the very noses of the cursed efreet and their firesouled vassals, during the glorious days of Calim’s Second Reign earlier in the century.

  The thought of his lost lord renewed Shahrokh’s ire. Too much was at stake to permit Marod’s meddling. His view through the courtyard floor told the djinni that the sultan had moved the palace to its westerly moorage, above the Arena Sabam where the chariot races were held. This meant he would find the windsouled noble in the stables.

  With their lesser powers, the genasi had developed an elaborate protocol for flying between buildings of the upper city, and for their rare trips to the earthbound realm of the slaves below. Had he been in less of a rage, Shahrokh might have taken the time to travel along those Saban pathways, marked in the air by floating coils of golden rope. As it was, he simply flew up and over the tiled roofs and doors of the palace, then dived into the crowded tumult of mud-brick stables that ringed the Arena Sabam.

  Any beast that Marod’s saddlers could fit with a harness might be found in this warren between the savage races they were forced to run, pulling war chariots manned by slave gladiators of the appropriate size.

  In a stable filled with elephants, Shahrokh found the master of games deep in conversation with a dull-eyed ogre gladiator. An especially foolish observer might have pointed out that the incongruous pair each resembled Shahrokh in a different way. The djinni had no legs but went about on an ever-present, ever-circling column of air. But if he had been born with such useless limbs, Shahrokh’s would have needed to be as long and heavily muscled as the ogre’s to explain his great height, and to match the obvious strength in his bare torso and arms. But where the ogre’s skin was a pallid green, Shahrokh’s was the same silver tone as the windsouled slavelord’s. Pasha and vizar also shared the same smooth scalp, shaved except for long black queues gathered in sapphire clasps. The windsouled also aped the djinni manner of dress. Except for its size, Marod’s intricately patterned crimson vest was a close match to the one Shahrokh wore.

  If the pasha sensed the vizar’s mood, then he ignored it. He greeted the djinni with a smile. “Shahrokh!” he said. “Have you met this ogre? Calls itself Cruddup or something like that-it’s the best beast handler among the slaves we bought over the winter-”

  The djinni waved a contemptuous hand. The air in the huge ogre’s lungs rushed out, the atmosphere around the creature’s head flowing away. The giant charioteer collapsed and died in the span of three heartbeats.

  Pasha Marod took a single step backward to avoid the ogre’s flailing limbs. There was a look of mild distaste on his handsome features. “You owe me fifteen bicentas,” he said.

  With another wave of his hand, Shahrokh caused a rain of gold coins to fall into the filthy straw of the pen next to them. “Dig it out of the dung, then. It will give you something to do while I shovel the pile you’ve heaped on our efforts.”

  A look of understanding crossed the pasha’s face. “You’ve heard that the WeavePasha has my son!” he said. “Exciting, isn’t it? I’d almost forgotten about the boy.”

  “The message you intercepted,” said Shahrokh, “was from an agent who is far from trustworthy. That the spy says he’s located your lost heir is too little to act on, especially since we are at such a crucial juncture.”

  The pasha shrugged. “Too little for you to act on, perhaps.”

  A faint sound of thunder rolled through the stable, quieting the elephants.

  “Marod,” said the djinni, leaning down to look the windsouled in the eye, “what have you done?”

  The master of games turned on his heel. “Nothing to jostle the strands in your delicate web, Shahrokh. The boy’s not even in Almraiven yet. Nowhere close, in fact. Our spy is taking him to a village of earthsouled in the Spires of Mir first, though I cannot for the life of me understand why. But it’s far outside the Almraivenar’s sphere of influence and he’ll have no reason to suspect my hand in anything. I sent El Pajabbar-they were supposed to be the personal guard of the pasha’s eldest son under the human caliphs, anyway. See? Symmetry. Like their horns.”

  Shahrokh settled down, closer to the ground, directing the currents of his lower body to flow so that he studied the pasha’s face eye to eye, from an even height. The windsouled did not flinch from his gaze, even when the djinni held the stare far longer than most genasi could have withstood.

  At last, the djinni nodded. “I concede that I am impressed, Pasha. The idea is brutal, but not immediately dangerous to our goals.”

  It might even work, Shahrokh thought.

  Long leagues south and east of the circus’s camp, other bonfires lit the cloudless night. In a shallow dell outside the fortified abbey and village of Akkabal, a ring of fires burned in stone bowls, spitting and popping when the acolytes tending them threw in handfuls of foul-smelling herbs.

  One side of the dell was a natural wall of the local bedrock, an outcropping of which had been crudely hacked into a throne bearing the semblance of a huge hand. A thin man, hooded and masked, occupied the throne, flanked by a pair of underpriests.

  The three priests of Bane watched the large circle of glyphs that covered most of the floor in the natural amphitheater. Three dozen crossbowmen were positioned on the lip of the dell, evenly interspersed among the acolytes at the watchfires.

  One of the underpriests, a woman born in the Ithal Pass and a student of the night sky, took another look up through the flickering red light and black smoke of the fires.

  “Late!” she said.

  Her colleague, standing on the other side of their superior, spat. “If they were late the last time you checked the stars, Sister Arrovar, further observation will not find the circumstances changed.”

  He spoke in the barbarous accents o
f the cold North, and this only heightened his pretension in being the only one of the three Dreadmasters to trek out from the abbey dressed in full ceremonial garb.

  Motionless on the rocky throne, the Vigilant Talon Arianus idly watched the bickering of his two underlings. He encouraged their rivalry as a way of keeping their daggers from his own back, and as a distraction from the daily banalities involved in maintaining the detente between his master’s armed manor and the forces arrayed against them across the contested border in Tethyr. Any distraction from reading another chiding diplomatic communique from the Duke of Suretmarch was welcome, even one as mysterious as this unprecedented use of the abbey’s largest teleportation circle by allies unaffiliated with the Church of Bane. But his instructions from his superiors in Mintar were clear.

  More sensitive to the arcane energies involved in teleportation than either of the underpriests, Arianus sensed eldritch keys seeking the locks of the symbols of the circle, even while the two of them continued to hiss and curse each other. The magic held an elemental tang, quite unlike the unholy energies that usually activated the gate. He wistfully imagined a life that would allow him the time to study such phenomena-and a surge of anger boiled out of his black heart. The pair of idiots flanking him distracted him from even a cursory examination with their pointless games. He cleared his throat.

  The underpriests quieted. The woman’s breath grew shallow, and the man actually staggered in fear.

  Somewhat gratified by the reaction, Arianus directed their attention to the center of the circle, where a hazy image appeared. Even though the nature of the ritual bent any light streaming through the portal in odd ways that washed out colors and softened details, it was clear that the circle at the other side of the magical connection was drawn in a far more richly appointed space than this stark dell.

  The Vigilant Talon remembered the words that appeared in his mind the previous night, the message laced with just enough pain that he would know how important his master deemed it. “An old debt comes due. The djinnspawn holding Calim’s marker sends those of the horns through Foxx’s gate at tomorrow’s ninth bell. A scroll follows.”