by Rosie Scott
Now, the great city was little more than humps beneath the sand, where the land itself had attempted to swallow it whole. I could barely see the outline of what had once been buildings within the sands. As we approached the lost city under the soft pink light of the sunset at our backs, I noticed the sands were swept over the husks of buildings from the north, leaving the sides of the sandstone buildings facing the canyons visible from beneath the land itself. I remembered King Adar's runner reporting that, for he found it odd; he'd said Jaalam had always been covered from the south, leaving the northern faces of the buildings open to the air.
My eyes swept over the sands as our hyenas walked toward the lost city, tired from a long day's travel. I knew if the sands had cast over the city from the north, that is where the beast must have been. I wasn't sure what kind of beast to expect, but for now, there were no signs of it. In the vast desert to the left and north of Jaalam, there was a deep indent in the sands that looked to be about fifteen feet wide, and lowest at its center. It was almost as if a river flowed through this desert, but it brought no water. My eyes followed the indent to the horizon, where I could see the faint outline of the wall to the beastlands, the sandstone rising high into the skies, save for a crumbled section of it which laid in ruins below. The indent of the sands flowed until it hit the rubble, where it disappeared.
The army was mostly quiet as we approached the ghostly city, for we were looking for signs of the army which had come before us, and for signs of the beast that had defeated them. I hoped for traces of Hasani, if only so I could return to King Adar with my mission complete. I'd often wondered over the trip here what I would do if we could find no proof of him, for I didn't want to return to the king without anything tangible.
Theron kicked his hyena into a trot, and though it was fatigued with the day's travel, it obeyed him. I watched as he slowed the animal near a lump in the sands and dismounted, keeping the reins looped over his arm as he squatted and began to unearth the object. Slowly, the sands were wiped aside to show a thick, long shield. As Theron lifted the object up, he met resistance, before looking below it.
“There's a man still attached to this shield,” the ranger announced, looking back toward us, and letting the shield fall back to the sands.
I turned to look at the army that followed me. Though we had lost three men to the anubites the night before, the remaining men and women looked back to me for guidance, undeterred.
“We will search Jaalam and its sands until we find Hasani,” I told them. “Who can tell me what we are looking for?”
One woman walked forward a few steps on her hyena. An arbalest was strapped to her back, and a scimitar hung from a sheath by her side. “Hasani wears royal armor that is gold plated,” she announced, so most could hear her. “His hyena is as white as the clouds, but its coat is covered in dark spots. I know he would not leave her if he could help it. He carries javelins on him at all times, and a royal shield.”
Theron stared down at the shield before him. “Not this one?”
“No. That shield is silver. His is black, with red and gold trim.”
“Now, we search,” I announced to the army, who all began to kick their hyenas back into gear to seek out evidence of the prince. Though there were more than a hundred men and women out here today, including my companions, we were quiet as death as we walked slowly through the sands and into the dips of earth that once were streets which veined between Jaalam's buildings. Perhaps the army did not want to risk wakening the beast, wherever it had gone.
I dismounted Snickers near the outer edges of Jaalam, wiping the sands off of an object that protruded ever so slightly above the earth. I was not strong enough to unearth it, but soon, Anto was by my side, and he hefted the object out of the sands, proving it was a saddle. Given it would not leave the ground completely, we figured it was still attached to a hyena, and let it be.
Our search continued under the darkening skies, until the men and women in the army were becoming frustrated with the lack of evidence and the quickly disappearing sunlight. Theron finally walked up to me, holding a torch, and I lit it for him with my fire magic. As it brightened the sands around us, the ranger looked to Jaalam, where its buildings attempted to hide from view.
“What if he is beneath the sands, like the rest?” Theron pondered aloud to me.
I frowned as I watched the soldiers continue to walk around fruitlessly. “That's what I'm worried about.”
Cerin wandered over to us then, from searching in the sands nearby. “You're worried about not finding Hasani?” He questioned, having only heard part of my previous statement.
“We're worried he's beneath the sands,” Theron replied to the necromancer. “For if he is, we will not find evidence of it without getting each of these soldiers to dig in these endless sands for days, and we cannot return to the king empty-handed.”
I continued to watch the soldiers, thinking. “They are so quiet. They fear the beasts.” Turning to the two men beside me, I added, “They will not want to stay and dig for corpses for days. They don't like being here as it is.”
Cerin huffed dryly. “I don't see why we'd need to make them dig, anyway. I can unearth all of the corpses of Jaalam in a matter of seconds. If Hasani is beneath the sands, we will find him.”
I hesitated. Cerin's offer to raise the dead would solve our problems if Hasani was among them. Even still, we had to think about how that could affect the soldiers. The corpses were swallowed by the sands, and were not fully decomposed. It was a given that some of the dead would still be recognizable to the living. I remembered how seeing Bjorn raised from the dead had sickened and shocked me. I did not want to be the cause of that to the people who now followed my lead.
My eyes found the sunset, once more. Most of the bright colors had faded toward the west, and the sky was a darkening blue. I turned to Theron, my mind made.
“Get Druhv, and take the soldiers to the west. Set up camp, and let them know we are wrapping up here for the night and will return when we can.”
Theron nodded, looking back toward the way we'd come. “How far west?”
“Far enough that you may see Jaalam during the day, and hear us during the night.”
“Aye. Will do.” Theron wandered off to find the other tracker, leaving Cerin and I alone.
“I think the soldiers back at the castle were right,” Cerin mused, his eyes following along the disturbed sands leading east. “This was probably the work of Mantus.”
“How would you know?” I questioned. “We don't even know what kind of creature it could be.”
Cerin nodded toward the sands. “Jakan told us it travels underground and disturbs the landscape. That is what happened here.” He turned, jerking a thumb toward Jaalam's buildings. “It disturbed the sands so much that the southern walls of the buildings are showing, when the runner said the northern sides were all that were visible. Something has been here recently which was large and strong enough to change the land.”
I nodded, watching as Theron and Druhv reappeared along Jaalam's edge, with members of the army in tow. They mounted their hyenas, and began trotting off to the west. Nyx, Jakan, and Anto all appeared between the hidden buildings of the edge of the city, making their way to us.
“Do you disagree?” Cerin asked, because I'd said nothing.
“No. I've been wondering the same,” I admitted. “I am just worried that if it has been here recently, it will come back.”
The others approached us, and the five of us were now alone on the outskirts of the lost city. Nyx watched as the army following Theron slowly disappeared into the night. Turning to me, she asked, “You withdrew the army?”
“I fear Hasani is dead,” I explained. “We don't wish to stay here longer than necessary. Cerin's going to raise the dead.”
Jakan grimaced at that. I could tell he still wasn't used to the idea. “You were right to withdraw them, then.” Turning to Cerin, the Vhiri asked, “Afterwards, can you direct the dead
east of Jaalam? When the sun rises tomorrow, the soldiers might be able to see the dead. It'd be best if you hid them across the buildings, out of view.”
Cerin nodded. “I can do that.” Glancing toward where Theron had led the army, he added, “I suppose I can get started. If we can't see them, they can't see us.”
The necromancer walked to the edges of the city, just between the desert which held signs of battle and the humps of covered buildings, his scythe hanging heavily at his side. It was a smart place to stand for it, as we knew there had been some sort of battle here, but the buildings were a good place to hide for any soldiers who had tried to avoid the beast. He figured the dead would be spread amongst both locales, and I hoped he was right.
Cerin lowered both palms toward the ground, black swirling balls of death energy growing in both hands, circling in magical barriers with intense speed, before he released. The energy spread over the ground at his feet as a black fog, before intensifying into thick tendrils, each one splitting dozens of times and slithering across the sands in hundreds of directions. Given the overwhelming number of tendrils, I knew the dead was plentiful here. It made me wonder how many of the corpses would be recent, and whether or not Nahara had ever gotten around to cleaning up the bodies and wreckage from the fall of Jaalam long ago when the city had been lost to the sands.
The earth rumbled beneath our feet, and sand erupted in hundreds of places around us and in the city as the dead rose, heeding Cerin's call. Anto stumbled back a step as a zombie burst through the land at his feet, the arm that appeared through the sands still tanned and thick with black hair, proving many of the corpses here were very recent and still showing signs of the people they once were.
We all scanned the dead as they shambled toward Cerin, looking for the golden armor we'd been told to keep watch for. There were hundreds and hundreds of the dead, and though the zombies were more plentiful here than the older skeletons, there were still plenty of the bony dead as well. It was clear most of Nahara's army was here, having lost their lives to the constant war with the beasts.
The army of the dead would have been terrifying, if it wasn't on our side. There were hordes of the dead, and they all made their way to Cerin, many of them still dressed in ragged pieces of armor from years past, clutching weapons of all types. Some still held arbalests, though I doubted they would use the weapon as intended, given the lack of ammo. I wondered if the dead would use the large crossbows simply as blunt melee weapons.
We all looked through the dead for proof of Hasani, but we didn't get very far. Within the minute the dead was risen, we heard a muted screaming.
The group of us glanced nervously around at each other, as if making sure the noise was elsewhere. The screaming was muffled, separated by us from some material object, so I knew it could not be that a soldier from our living army had seen what we had done.
Nyx's black eyes were lost in the shadows of the darkening city. Right now, the Alderi would have been one of the few who could see clearly in such darkness, as her eyes were meant for it. I knew, too, that her ears were a few steps ahead of the rest of ours, for they were developed to be able to hear through thick cavern walls. That would prove helpful here.
“It comes from the buildings,” she said, before darting off to the city.
We chased after her, running through slopes of sand that ran off of what once were roofs of buildings, covering doors and windows that at one time sat open to the air. The shadows were dark and thick in Jaalam, now, and I could not see well as I followed my friend to the source of the screaming.
“Kai!” I heard Jakan behind me, and slowed to turn to him. He held a torch out to me, clearly asking if I would light it. I did so, and we continued into the city with the Vhiri lighting the path, though I now had lost Nyx.
“Who's there?” It was Nyx, and she was off to my left. I hurried down a path between two covered buildings, finding her on her hands and knees, staring into a hole near the ground which had once been a window or door of a building. Though the structure was mostly covered in sand, Nyx was on the southern side of it, where the wall was dusty, but otherwise mostly bare.
“Necromancer! Necromancer!” I heard the muted protests of a man, from far within the hole.
“Cerin!” Nyx whipped her head toward us as she heard us approach. “Send the dead past the city, like Jakan said, and dispel them!”
Cerin hurried off past her, and the dead shambled after him like loyal pets. A few minutes passed, and I heard mumbled cries from within the hole Nyx peered into, as if someone was inconsolable.
“...the army?” I heard just the last words of another man's question, from deep underground. The voice was confident, but fatigued. I wondered how many people were trapped beneath the sands. I stood above Nyx, struggling to hear them. Anto and Jakan stood just beside me, lighting up the sandstone wall with the torch.
“No! No! Not the army! Necromancer!” It was said with a hiss.
“I am no necromancer,” Nyx retorted, into the hole. “We were sent by King Adar to find his son and his army.”
There was a pause. “My father does not like to deal with the Alderi.”
My heart picked up its pace, and I collapsed to the ground beside my friend. “Hasani?” I questioned, directing my voice into the hole, though I could not see.
“Ah. So you are not all Alderi,” the man mused, from the underground. Somehow, he could see me, though all I saw was blackness.
“No. I have a unit of King Adar's army with me today, along with my companions,” I explained, though I could not see who I spoke to. “We come from all over Chairel. I am Kai Sera, King Adar's ally.”
“Truly?” I heard a few steps, before a man's face finally came into view. He was darkly tanned, with a head full of black hair, and a roughly cut raggedy black beard. I could tell he had tried to cut it with nothing but a blade within the darkness of his confines. He was probably in his early thirties, and his face had the wide bone structure that reeked of a confident warrior. His eyes were a light blue, which was so rare for a man as dark complected as he. He was a brutally handsome man, and I could tell by Nyx's silence that she was quite taken with him.
“Are you Hasani?” I demanded, even as Cerin hurried back to my side from where he'd dispelled the dead.
“I am he,” the man replied. “My father has clearly been busy in my absence, if he has finally called you here. Has he not sent men before you? We have been holed up in this gods-forsaken building for so long I have lost count of the sunrises.”
“He sent runners,” I replied.
Hasani laughed tiredly. “Of course he did,” he mused, sarcastically. “Runners, who I cannot hear from this hole in the ground, and who fear entering Jaalam because they do not wish to face the beasts. He means for me to die out here.”
“You think your father means to kill you?” I asked, shocked.
“No—you misunderstand me, friend. My father simply lacks a brain.” Hasani's eyes passed my shoulders, noting the others who stood behind me. “Could you, perhaps, help us out, or would you like to continue chatting while my people starve?”
Despite his biting words, I could tell the man meant them mostly in tired jest. Hasani and his army had been in Jaalam for the better part of an entire moon, and I couldn't begin to imagine how they had survived this long.
“How do we free you?” I asked, noting the wall along the ground was solid.
“We took shelter in this building to regroup during our fight with Mantus,” Hasani explained, before pointing off to the northern side of it. “The bastard circled the city and sprayed its sands through the open doorway of the north end. There is a doorway over there, on the eastern side of the building. My men and I have been digging for weeks, and all it does is cave in.” Hasani glanced back to me through the tiny hole. “I am uncertain how much sand keeps us from coming out, but if you could dig on that side while we dig on this side, perhaps we could be free.”
I nodded, before turning to
the others. “We need to retrieve volunteers from the army. I am sure some of them have tools with which to move the sand.”
Anto and Jakan offered to go fetch such volunteers, and disappeared into the night.
“Hasani,” I said, putting my focus back to the warrior held hostage underground. “How many men do you have with you?”
“Not many,” he admitted. “Many were injured even before we got holed up in here. Some of them have since died from their injuries.” He eyed me suspiciously. “Did you use your necromancy near Jaalam? The dead we have with us in here were walking again tonight.”
I knew for sure, then, that Hasani knew enough about me and my powers to give him that knowledge. “My companion did, yes. We were looking for you, and feared you dead beneath the sands.”
The prince nodded, before he glanced down near his feet. “Well, thank you for stopping the spell. My soldiers are quivering in fear.”
“How are you on food and water?”
Hasani grimaced. “Low, of course. We were forced to butcher my hyena, for she was already wounded and we were out of food. Thankfully, the death of the injured gives my healthy soldiers access to their extra water flasks.”
I reached a hand toward the hole. “Give your water containers to me.”
Hasani wasted little time in doing so, handing them through two at a time. He watched with relief as I began filling them with water from my magic.
