Sand of the Soul

by Voronica Whitney-Robinson

  Before she could grasp him, she collapsed like a marionette with her strings cut. Steorf caught Tazi just before she hit the ground. He held her under her arms and lowered her delicately to the cavern floor.

  “Tazi!” he cried as he knelt beside her.

  She didn’t respond to Steorf’s voice or his gentle shaking. She was completely drenched in sweat and convulsing. Steorf licked his lips nervously and rapidly ran his hands over her body. He could find no major wounds on her. Her lips whitened and she slipped into total unconsciousness, her breathing almost undetectable.

  Steorf, not knowing what else to do, lifted her in his arms and rocked her slowly. The change in position caused her head to loll against his chest, and Steorf was then able to spot the cause of her condition.

  Just below her chin was an inflamed cut and he realized that she must have been bitten by one of the spiders. Cradling her shoulders with one arm, he placed his other hand, palm down, on Tazi’s wound.

  “I won’t let go of you,” he whispered.

  Steorf gazed at her ashen face and closed his eyes.

  During the few days between discovering Ebeian’s body and his journey through the gate, Steorf had studied madly. He had gone through his mother’s extensive collections of spells and tried to learn as much as he could before leaving Selgaunt. The only problem was that though he had expanded his realm of knowledge, he hadn’t had enough time to practice some of the new spell abilities fully. His skills were lacking. What he was about to attempt was untried, but he knew he had no choice. Steorf’s hand began to glow slightly white and darkened to brown as he drained the poison from Tazi’s system. The torn flesh on her neck started to knit under his touch until no trace of the small wound remained.

  Steorf slowly opened his eyes and looked expectantly at Tazi. Her eyes were still closed but Steorf could see that her chest rose and fell evenly. A rosy stain began to spread over her chalky lips. Steorf tenderly brushed a strand of her ebony hair from her eyes and held his breath expectantly. Soon enough, Tazi’s eyes flew open and she wildly clawed out, disorientated. Steorf effortlessly caught her hands with his free one and made soothing sounds, trying to calm her.

  “It’s all right now, dear heart,” he whispered.

  “What happened?” Tazi asked with some confusion.

  Steorf didn’t release his hold on her.

  “I think the fight just caught up with you,” he told her easily, but his words belied his expression.

  Tazi could see the worry lines still etched on his face.

  “I think it was a little more than that,” she replied, her voice growing stronger by the moment. “I think I was dead.”

  “I wouldn’t ever let that happen,” Steorf responded.

  Their eyes locked briefly.

  Seeing that she was rapidly gaining strength, Steorf released her hands and stood up, helping her to rise as well. When he was certain that she was steady, he let her stand unaided.

  “You don’t have to watch me like a hawk,” Tazi told him after she caught him studying her while she stretched her limbs experimentally.

  “Don’t I?” he asked.

  She had shaken off most of the effects of the poison, thanks to Steorf, and she scrutinized him. He looked tired, and she knew whatever he had done to expel the venom from her body had taxed him immensely. It was one more strength that she hadn’t known he possessed. The tunnel was not nearly as bright as it was earlier and Tazi realized that was because Steorf was much weaker. She pushed some of his unruly, blond locks from his eyes, unknowingly mimicking his earlier gesture.

  “Maybe I should keep an eye on you,” she said gently.

  Asraf, having dispatched his last opponent, was breathing hard. He watched as Steorf clasped Tazi’s hand, the Sembian woman seeming to have recovered completely under the mage’s ministrations. He was so caught up in their plight that he lost track of his own surroundings. An aranea in spider form, forgotten by all three of them, scuttled after Asraf and clambered up the rock wall behind him. When the spider was on the cave ceiling directly over the Child of Ibrandul, it dropped a silken strand of webbing down ten feet until the thick thread was level with Asraf’s neck. Then the creature waited for the inevitable and it didn’t have to wait long. Asraf took a step back a moment later and sealed his fate.

  The instant he brushed against the strand of webbing, his neck was caught. Instinctively, Asraf spun around to see what he was trapped by and that only exacerbated the situation. He had wrapped the silken cord mostly around his neck and he was held fast.

  That was all the aranea needed. It hauled Asraf up as though he weighed nothing. Tazi and Steorf, both still recovering from their clash, didn’t see his perilous predicament.

  Face to face with the fanged horror, Asraf called out, “Ibrandul, deliver me from this beast,” but the prayer failed to reach the notice of any deity.

  Tazi heard his plea, though, and turned at Asraf’s shout. She watched, horror-struck, as the spider enveloped Asraf in its multi-limbed embrace and bit down on his shoulder. Asraf hissed in pain, and Tazi rushed to free her guardblade, which was still embedded in the back of the dead drow.

  Steorf, too, had recovered enough to realize Asraf’s predicament.

  “No!” he shouted, and a bolt of flame leaped from his outstretched hand.

  As soon as the flame touched the aranea, it dropped Asraf. He fell to the cave floor with a dull thud. The aranea squealed as its carapace burst into flames, and it followed Asraf’s descent to the ground. Landing on its back, the spider screeched pitifully for a brief time as its limbs worked futilely in the air. Eventually, its arms stopped their twitching. The cavern filled with the acrid smoke of burnt arachnid flesh.

  Tazi sidestepped around the fiery remains of the spider and rushed to Asraf’s unmoving form. Steorf followed close behind. Tazi dropped to her knees and rolled Asraf over with trembling fingers. His eyes were shut tightly against the pain of the poisonous bite. Tazi gently lifted his head and placed it in her lap. She hardly noticed that Steorf had dropped down beside her. He reached across Asraf’s shoulders and tore aside the robes that covered the place where the spider had inflicted its venomous bite.

  Tazi grimaced as Steorf’s actions revealed a shoulder already horribly swollen, with purple lines of toxin running toward Asraf’s neck, head, and heart. She looked helplessly at Steorf as Asraf writhed in pain. He returned her glance and looked determinedly at the wounded Child of Ibrandul. She didn’t want Asraf to die, but she was afraid the strain of saving him might prove too draining for Steorf.

  “Steorf,” she started to say, but he shook his head.

  Decisively, Steorf tore more of Asraf’s robes away to further reveal the injured site and laid his hands on the wounded man. Asraf’s eyes flew open at Steorf’s touch. He weakly reached up with a palsied hand and grasped Steorf’s wrist.

  “Don’t,” he pleaded to the young mage, a desperate look in his fevered eyes.

  “Why not?” Steorf asked.

  “Because this is the way it should be,” he reasoned weakly.

  “What?” Tazi asked.

  Asraf tried to smile at her but couldn’t. Instead, he whispered, “This is my punishment, and I accept it willingly.”

  “Why should you be punished?” Steorf argued.

  His anguished helplessness made his voice harsh. However, he had come to respect Asraf and Tazi realized Steorf wouldn’t intervene if Asraf refused his assistance.

  “Because I betrayed Ibrandul,” Asraf answered with a fading voice. Tazi stroked his young face, and his eyelids flickered at her touch. He did manage a final smile.

  “I just didn’t believe that you two were evil,” he said, then his breath rattled for the last time.

  Tazi and Steorf kneeled in stunned silence for a few heartbeats. Finally Tazi gently removed Asraf’s head from her lap and got up. Steorf remained where he was with his legs crossed and his head in his hands. Tazi looked down at Asraf’s body and whirled to
pace the cavern, gently lit by the still smoldering body of the last spider to fall. That was the only light left as Steorf’s spell of illumination had all but faded away. It was enough light to see that the cave floor was covered with unmoving aranea bodies. She strode over to a pile of three corpses and began to kick at them viciously.

  “That won’t do any good,” Steorf finally told her.

  “It won’t do any harm, either,” she growled back viciously and kicked at a still twitching spider limb.

  “Dark and empty,” she yelled accusingly to the cavern ceiling. “I thought he protected his Children from monsters in the dark.”

  Eventually, exhausted from both the battle and her anger, Tazi stormed over to a wall, placed her back against it, and slowly slid to the ground. She sat with her legs bent and her arms propped on her knees, hands dangling limply.

  She heard her own ragged breathing, felt her heart trying to burst from her leather vest, and she knew no tirade would do anyone any good. She wouldn’t risk undoing all of Steorf’s healing efforts. Tazi thumped her head against the wall and silently cursed all the gods.

  Not budging from his spot, Steorf said, “If his own god couldn’t save him, perhaps he wasn’t meant to be saved.”

  Tazi bit off the angry retort hanging on her tongue. She realized that Steorf was just as exhausted as she was, if not more so, and had the added burden of knowing that he might actually have been able to save Asraf.

  Tazi stood up as if in a dream and began to walk around the chamber again. She glanced from Asraf to the many bodies of the aranea. Slowly a thought began to grow.

  “This isn’t right,” she said.

  “ ‘There is no right or wrong in the darkness,’ ” Steorf quoted the dead Child of Ibrandul bitterly.

  “That’s what I mean,” she replied. “This is exactly the kind of enemy his god was supposed to save him from. Asraf was one of the most dedicated people I’ve ever come across. You could hear it in the way he talked about his faith.”

  She stood in front of Steorf and pointed to Asraf’s unmoving form.

  “He should have been protected,” she said, “and he wasn’t.”

  Seizing on that thread, Tazi rapidly searched the tunnel. She turned over every corpse and discovered they were all aranea—monstrous spiders that could transform themselves into the likeness of drow or other humanoid creatures to confuse and intimidate their prey. These were intelligent creatures that couldn’t have just been creeping around in the dark at random, for no reason at all. The whole mission had been puzzling her, and the pieces were falling into place.

  “The other two Children of Ibrandul aren’t here,” she said slowly.

  Steorf stood up and surveyed the room.

  “I don’t think they even followed us in here,” he said.

  Tazi balled up her hand and thumped the wall with the bottom of her fist.

  “That’s what they were arguing about in the last cavern,” she realized.

  “Those scheming bastards were trying to decide which trap to send us down,” Steorf added bitterly.

  Tazi’s faced blanched.

  “And they’ve got Fannah. They separated us right from the start,” Tazi realized sickly, “and led us down the wrong path. And we went.”

  “We’ll get her back,” he vowed, “even if it has to be over every one of their rotting bodies.”

  He started to storm back the way they had come, but Tazi caught him by the arm and pulled him to a stop.

  “I don’t think they’re entirely to blame,” she told him.

  “What?” Steorf said, shocked that she could even consider that. “Are you sure you’re fully recovered?”

  “Remember Asraf’s last words? He said he didn’t believe we were evil.”

  “So?” he answered, too angry to follow her train of thought.

  “That must mean that the others do believe we’re evil. Someone got to those Children of Ibrandul and spun a vicious lie for them so he could use them for his own devices,” she explained. “I know of only one man capable of that: Ciredor.”

  “You think he manipulated them?” Steorf asked, cooling somewhat.

  “I know it,” she answered with absolute certainty.

  Before Steorf could say anything else, a hooded figure dressed entirely in gray robes moved out of the deepest shadows of the cavern. The figure was as tall as Steorf but neither he nor Tazi could distinguish if the figure was even human, let alone male or female. They held their ground as it approached, but Tazi’s left hand slid down to the hilt of one of her guardblades.

  “Who are you?” she called out to the figure when it was about ten feet away.

  “Lady,” the figure began in a deep and resonating voice, “I have come to call for you.”

  The Gray Caller slowly raised one arm draped in smoky hues and pointed at Tazi.

  She could tell Steorf was tensing up, at the ready.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked, as the Caller had made no overtly threatening moves against them.

  “Lady,” the Caller answered, “in seeing through those things that were deceiving you, you earned my attention as a worthy soul. I have come to offer an invitation and my services.”

  “An invitation to what?” she inquired as she took a step away from Steorf.

  “I am here to escort you to the Dark Bazaar, if you care to go,” the Gray Caller replied.

  “I do very much wish to go,” Tazi answered, after considering the figure’s words and trusting her intuition.

  As she and Steorf both approached the Caller, the figure made no move to lead them anywhere, and held its ground.

  “The invitation is only for you, Lady,” the Caller explained.

  Tazi turned to Steorf and clasped his hands.

  “Stay here, and I’ll be back as quickly as I can,” she told him. “You should be safe enough. The other Children of Ibrandul have probably left us for dead.”

  “How can you trust this thing after what just happened?” he asked her.

  “It feels right,” she explained, releasing his hands. “Trust me.”

  Turning to face the Gray Caller she said, “I’m ready.”

  “This way, Lady,” the figure said, and motioned to the far end of the cavern.

  As they slowly walked together, Tazi turned to the Caller and remarked, “There isn’t some set road one could follow as the Children of Ibrandul led me to believe. This is the only true way into the Night Market, isn’t it?”

  The Caller nodded, and she tried to catch a glimpse under the hood but she was unable to see anything other than more shadows.

  “Only those who are invited may enter the Dark Bazaar to trade secret for secret. Only those who can see through deception or prove themselves worthy in some other manner are ever invited. Your insight serves you well when you let it.”

  Steorf debated with himself for a few moments before he decided to follow them. He broke into a trot and nearly caught up to Tazi and her guide.

  “Tazi,” he called out.

  When she didn’t turn around he reached out to grab her shoulder, but his hand passed through thin air.

  Both Tazi and the Gray Caller had disappeared.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE DARK BAZAAR

  Tazi couldn’t believe her eyes. The Gray Caller had simply rounded a brief corner in the tunnel, and it opened up into an eerie, twilight market. She stopped in her tracks.

  Tazi thought that the cavern was larger than any she had ever seen. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the steady drip of water. Even in her wonder, she realized that her perceptions were somewhat skewed.

  The whole area was distorted by a light mist that covered everything. When she looked down at herself, her semi-nude arms had a faint purple tinge to them. The Gray Caller appeared almost black, with a red cast to its cloak. From where they stood, she could hear the low murmur of many voices, but they were indistinct. There were shadowy forms, but she couldn’t make out any people. Tazi k
new there was only a fine line between reality and illusion in this place.

  “Is this it?” she asked quietly.

  The Gray Caller nodded.

  Tazi started to pick her way down through the winding stalagmites to the main chamber. She felt strangely apprehensive descending the natural stone staircase, like a young woman making her debut into society when all eyes are upon her. But there was no fanfare and no gawking admirers or even the crueler sort waiting for a slipup.

  Slightly disorientated by the muted quality of the place, she could hear her own footsteps, but they seemed very distant. Small rocks gave way under her feet, and she knew the stones fell, but she didn’t quite hear the clatter they made. Tiny pinpricks of light twinkled sporadically around her.

  Moving through here is like walking alone in a field of snow, she thought.

  When Tazi reached what she assumed was the floor, she could just begin to separate different shapes in the fog. Stalagmites and stalactites formed natural partitions, and the pockets they shaped littered the huge grotto. Tazi could see small groups of figures, made hazy by the halo of candlelight in each that she passed.

  There was more.

  As she approached the “stalls,” Tazi heard the voices more clearly, but the languages were all different. Having grown up in a city of commerce, she recognized the tone of the various conversations and knew that bargains were being struck, but as she neared a stall close enough to peek in and snatch a glimpse of the occupants, suddenly the language switched to Common and made perfect sense to her. Her eyes grew wide.

  “How can that be?” she asked her escort.

  The figure walked just a pace behind her down through the cavern as though it was her shadow—and she wasn’t the only one with a shade in her wake.

  Many folk wandered around with their own Gray Callers trailing after. Tazi watched as one Caller faded into the background after its guest was seated with another trader and played no further role in the bargaining. Tazi suspected that was one of the rules of the marketplace.

  “Here there are no barriers, not even language, to stop the trading,” the Caller explained. “We leave your choice of partners entirely up to you.”