Sand of the Soul

by Voronica Whitney-Robinson

  “Then you are probably already aware of the manner of his death,” she continued, not waiting for a reply. “I was doubly surprised myself. First to have Steorf, of all people, drag me away from the Kit, and of course, to then find Ebeian dead.”

  A small part of her hoped that she might have wounded Cale at the mention of Steorf’s name.

  In the aftermath of her initial encounter with Ciredor, Tazi knew Cale was somewhat pleased that she had broken off her friendship with the mage-in-training. For as long as she had known either one, Tazi was aware of an unpleasant undercurrent between Steorf and Cale and was certain there was no love lost. Cale’s pleasure, however, soon dissipated as Tazi shut him out over time as well. Between that and the long months of recovery since her injuries, a wedge had come between them.

  “Steorf and I discovered that it was Ciredor who was responsible for Eb’s death,” Tazi told him. “That bastard plans to take Fannah next for something I don’t completely understand, but I won’t allow it. I’ve got Steorf keeping guard over her in my rooms at the Kit while I get ready to take this battle to him … in Calimport.”

  “You remember your lessons well,” Cale finally answered her.

  “ ‘Always face your enemy at a time and place of your own choosing,’ was what you taught me. Well,” she said, “the place is not quite one of my choosing, but maybe with Fannah’s knowledge of Calimport, I can turn it into one.”

  Tazi felt the need to move. She stood up and began to prowl around Cale’s room again. She had often teased him that he chose to live like a cloistered monk. Since the incident with the shadow demons, Tazi thought his room, like his manner around her, had grown even colder. Glancing at the deep shadows in every corner, Tazi noticed the room was more secretive than she ever remembered.

  It might just be a façade, she thought, just as my room is. Perhaps this darkness no more represents Cale than the lace doilies and pastel paints reflect who I really am.

  “Cale?” she finally asked with her hand outstretched.

  His words stopped whatever question she was going to pose, and even Tazi wasn’t sure what that would’ve been.

  “I cannot possibly go with you,” he said with closed eyes. “There are certain matters here that demand my attention.”

  Tazi turned away, shoulders slumping. Whatever she thought he might have said, a refusal was not something she had expected. Tazi wrapped her arms around herself as though suddenly chilled. She wished she was anywhere but there, unexpectedly feeling abandoned.

  Stupid girl, she chided herself, what did you expect him to say?

  That didn’t change how she felt. With her back turned, Tazi didn’t see what Cale did next.

  He slowly rose from the chair, a suddenly tender look fixed on his severe features. He reached a long, muscular arm toward Tazi but stopped within an inch of brushing her short locks with his fingertips. Instead, he balled his hand into a fist and lowered his arm to his side. In a militaristic fashion, Cale squared off his shoulders to deliver his next lesson.

  “The name Uskevren means ‘too bold to hide,’ as you well know. You should remember the most important example I ever taught you: Finish whatever you begin,” Cale reminded her. “You must finish this with Ciredor.”

  Tazi kept her back to Cale but stood up a little straighter at the mention of the necromancer’s name. “I know that,” she replied quietly.

  “Though I can’t go with you,” Cale continued and Tazi wasn’t sure but thought he sounded a little sad, “I can help you somewhat. Among the papers on your writing desk, you will find an address. It is a dwelling in one of the more dubious quarters of Selgaunt that houses more than it seems.” He paused, but Tazi didn’t turn. Cale continued, “In this residence, you will discover a gate to Calimport. It will save you many days—even months—of travel, but the gate is not without cost.”

  “I know about costs,” she whispered.

  Cale nodded at her response but the acknowledgement was lost on Tazi. She kept herself rigid like a wall and refused to face Cale while so many emotions coursed through her. It was the only way she could keep herself in check. She wasn’t going to allow Cale to see her turmoil. Undeterred, he continued his counsel.

  “I also think it would be fortuitous to bring the scrolls you took from Ciredor with you. After your grueling encounter with him, I still marvel that you had the presence of mind to take them with you,” he admitted proudly. “I have a feeling that their meaning will become clear on this journey.”

  “ ‘Better to be prepared than caught empty-handed,’ ” she quoted with a touch of sarcasm.

  “Always,” he answered. “The last thing I would advise is that you have both Fannah and Steorf accompany you.”

  Tazi tilted her head and almost looked over her shoulder at him when Cale mentioned Steorf by name. She stopped herself, feeling that it would somehow be a defeat to turn. If he was going to send her off without him, then so be it. She would be on her own.

  “Fannah will be much safer under your constant care,” he told her, and Tazi swelled a little at the compliment. “And you might find that in this journey you will need a mage you can trust.”

  Cale sighed wearily. Now it was his shoulders that sagged as if under a great weight.

  “Steorf,” he nearly whispered, “is a mage you can trust, Thazienne.”

  With that admission, Cale turned and walked over to his chair. He stood beside it and lightly rested his hand on its arm, the same hand he had wanted to touch Tazi with earlier.

  Once again, Cale had shocked her. Tazi never thought he would’ve recommended Steorf for anything, let alone as a comrade on so deadly an undertaking as this. She swallowed hard and turned to face him only to discover that Cale had moved away and presented his straight back to her.

  “If you think that is the course of action to take,” she finally replied, “then I’ll follow it.”

  “You have to do what you think is the wisest, Thazienne,” he reminded her. “For in the end, you live only with yourself.”

  “Thank you for everything,” she told him quietly.

  Cale didn’t turn, only nodded his head slowly in response. Tazi felt torn, wanting to go to him but also fearing to trust him, or herself, completely. When the awkward moment stretched out too long, she finally moved to go. She swung open the heavy door but paused in the doorway, not wanting to leave things between them like this.

  Tazi glanced back, half hoping to find him looking at her, but Cale still presented that rigid back to her. She found the sight oddly heartbreaking, the emotions he triggered in her a surprise even to Tazi. As she turned to leave, her eyes caught sight of his pine trunk. Closing the door behind her, Tazi realized that in all these years she never had found out what he kept in there—or in his heart.

  At the sound of Tazi’s departure, Cale turned toward the door.

  “Safe journey, dear heart,” he whispered.

  Shamur Uskevren watched for a moment longer and silently slid the viewing panel shut. Once she was certain it was sealed tight, she re-lit her lamp. She was especially cautious because she knew how observant Cale could be. If neither her daughter, Tazi, nor Cale had been aware that she had been witness to their whole conversation, she was probably safe from discovery.

  Though she was barefoot and dressed only in her silk night-clothes, Shamur ignored the chill. Her mind preoccupied with the events she had just observed, she made her way through the passage automatically. As far as Shamur knew only she and her husband, Thamalon, had any knowledge of the intricate, hidden routes that honeycombed Stormweather Towers. The spy portals had come in handy on many occasions when Shamur needed to test the loyalties of the various servants and guards the Uskevren hired from time to time. Tonight, they had revealed much more than loyalty.

  Shamur’s feet were so numb with cold by the time she returned that she hardly noticed as she crossed from the stone floor to the luxurious carpeting of her private bedroom. But she was not so distracted that sh
e didn’t observe that her fire was dying. She moved over to the ornately carved fireplace and added a log to the smoldering embers. A few moments of fanning and the wood was crackling cheerfully again.

  Certain the fire was stoked, Shamur padded around her canopied bed to her wooden armoire. She let her hand slide down the left side of the chest, her delicate fingers searching the various carved figures. Using a combination known only to her, Shamur pressed several of the indentations in the designs at once. With a tiny click, a panel swung open.

  She reached into the shallow compartment and withdrew the only item that was inside. Shamur held the note carefully in her hand, as if it was some precious artifact. The faintest trace of her daughter’s perfume still lingered on the parchment.

  She settled herself onto the settee near the fireplace and looked over the note with her keen gray eyes. There were only a few lines scrawled on it, and Shamur had read them so many times, she knew them by heart. Still, she read them aloud once more.

  “ ‘Whatever good is in me exists because of you,’ ” she quoted. “ ‘Ai armiel telere maenen hir. Cale.’ ”

  As she had for so many months, Shamur once again sent up a silent prayer that she had discovered the note before her daughter had.

  That night of Thazienne’s grievous wounds, Shamur couldn’t sleep. She had needed to see her daughter’s chest rise and fall one more time to reassure herself that Tazi still lived, regardless of what the priests told her. Only then would she be able to rest. Since she didn’t want to have to explain herself to anyone, let alone the servants, Shamur had quietly slipped into Thazienne’s bedroom after she saw Cale depart that night.

  Walking over to her daughter’s bedside, Shamur was amazed to discover the sudden, romantic confession Cale had left behind, written on her daughter’s personal stationary.

  Shamur was slightly in shock from the culmination of events that evening, and the note was too much for her. She slid it into a fold of her robe and, when she returned to her chambers later on, she hid the missive in the hollow panel in her wardrobe. She felt she needed some time to decide what was best for her daughter.

  Now, a year later, she saw that some sort of divide existed between her daughter and Erevis Cale. Obviously, he had never spoken of his feelings for her except in that note.

  Perhaps he has grown tired of waiting for a sign from Thazienne, the woman who “holds his heart forever,” she thought, before coming to a decision.

  Shamur looked a final time at the Elvish words of love written to her daughter from a family servant and threw the note into the fire. As the flames licked up the paper, Shamur felt certain she had done the right thing.

  She loved her daughter fiercely and would do anything to ensure Thazienne’s happiness. She wouldn’t have her daughter trapped in a painful union if it could be avoided. Being linked to a common servant just wasn’t right for her daughter, though it had taken this sad encounter between Tazi and Cale to cement her decision. Shamur had struggled for months with what was best and took this night as a sign. With the letter destroyed, she felt certain Thazienne’s long-term contentment was ensured.

  A soft knock on the door startled Shamur from her concerns.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Thamalon Uskevren, wearing a maroon and gold robe, walked in.

  “I’m not disturbing you, am I?” he asked.

  For the first time that evening, Shamur smiled. With her ash-blonde hair loose about her face, she looked more her daughter’s age. That fact was not lost to her husband’s appreciative gaze.

  “Come sit with me,” she invited, patting the cushion next to her.

  A year before, Shamur would never have extended an offer that intimate to her husband, but many things had changed over the past months, mostly for the better. She didn’t have to hide behind a mask with him any longer. When all was said and done, there was no one else with whom she would rather share a moment like this.

  Thamalon sat down beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Shamur settled against him and let a small sigh escape her lips.

  “What keeps you awake, wife?” Thamalon asked kindly.

  “I’m just thinking of our children,” she finally replied. “There are so many things that could go awry for them.”

  The Old Owl, as he was known to many, kissed his wife on her head and replied, “With you guarding them, nothing horrible could ever happen.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she answered and hugged him close.

  “How utterly perfect,” Ciredor chuckled aloud as he watched Tazi step out of Cale’s bedroom.

  There were very few unanswered questions in his life, but the room Ciredor was in happened to contain many of them. Sometime during the Age of Skyfire, the chamber had been hewn out of the desert mountains while the djinn, Calim and Memnon, raged against each other. The walls were carved with an ancient script that defied all his efforts at translation, but beyond that, Ciredor had very few clues as to who else might have occupied it before him.

  He had let his anger get the best of him many years before when he discovered the sanctum and killed its former guardians too quickly. Realizing that he had lost an opportunity for knowledge, the necromancer wrote off the mistake as one of many lessons of life and vowed never to make that mistake again.

  At various points in the natural recesses of the room, glow lights winked in the darkness, but their illumination was outshone by the radiance of a multifaceted, amethyst no bigger than a man’s fist. It rested on a natural rock pedestal, the focal point of the room. The eerie, purple light it emitted flickered oddly off of the jagged walls and the hollow caverns of Ciredor’s cheeks. Behind him, the chamber connected to a passageway that was lined with ten figures of various sizes, all at least as large as an elf. The amethyst’s brilliance played affectionately on those figures, caressing them.

  But it was Ciredor who was enraptured. With an almost loving look, he reached out to the stone again and grazed it with his thin fingers. It blazed more intensely at his touch. He gazed deeply into the stone and began to laugh once again at what he saw within.

  “My dear, dear Thazienne,” he said to the gem, “how can it be that so much time has passed and you are still the same?”

  But there was no one else to answer him. Not that he needed an answer, either. He knew well enough that Tazi had simply survived this long in her life due to luck and her family’s fortune. He wondered just how many times her parents had had to pay to have her resurrected, she seemed to be so careless.

  Obviously, her parents weren’t all that cautious, either. They had, after all, made the mistake of letting him come into their home to “heal” their stricken whelp once. He felt he was soon to find out just how many other mistakes they had made with their daughter.

  “How completely foolish and trusting you are, little girl,” he persisted, staring into the gem. “Didn’t you learn anything from our last encounter? So you think you are going to bring the battle to a … how did you so quaintly put it?” He paused for a moment before continuing, “a time and place of your choosing?”

  He threw back his head and laughed again.

  “Since when has any of this ever been your choosing? Do you think the boy-mage found your elf lover by his skills alone?” he asked the stone. “Oh, Tazi—” he shook his head—“how I wish you could see me as I see you right now. It would be rather exquisite to enjoy in person the pain that all of this would cause you … but that will come soon enough.”

  For a moment, Ciredor could again taste the bitter hurt Tazi had felt those years past when he revealed to her that her close confidant had been simply a hired hand. There was an undeniable sweetness to the pain she had emanated that night. Tazi had possessed a certain innocence then, despite the lifestyle she had chosen, and he had been the man to claim that innocence. More than once since then, Ciredor had found himself savoring that memory despite the hatred he harbored at losing to such a child. Finding he couldn’t contain himself any l
onger, he began to pace around the chamber.

  “Through clues and signs, I led your would-be-mage to that tableau I carefully staged just for you, dear Thazienne. I even hoped you might recognize my signature on this without any magical assistance, but you proved yourself unworthy again. I suppose I shouldn’t be too disappointed in you. After all, in the end, I will get everything I need.”

  Absently, he stroked his goatee.

  “It was rather entertaining to watch that old man you hired strain and groan and sweat as he struggled to animate poor, dead Ebeian,” Ciredor said. “And, finally, that corpse told you just enough to whet your appetite and send you to me, bearing gifts, no less.”

  One side of his mouth turned up into a smirk.

  “And still, you don’t see.”

  Ciredor moved swiftly across the chamber to the gem, caught up in his own discourse.

  “I was the one who allowed Ebeian to speak, as it were. It was only the words of my choosing that passed through his battered mouth. Will you miss those tender lips, little Tazi?” he wondered.

  He kneeled before the dais where the amethyst lay. Stretching one arm across the platform, he allowed his head to rest against it and stared at the jewel as if he was watching a lover sleep.

  “Once more, I pull your strings, sweet puppet,” he continued softly, “and you dance for me most obediently. I’m waiting here with open arms to welcome you to my home. When you arrive, we will settle the debts between us, Uskevren. When I’m done with you and those you hold dear,” his voice dropped to a deadly whisper, “you will wish I’d killed you that first night.”