“Make sure this is something you’re going to be able to live down,” she told him lightly. “You know I will forever remind you of it when we get back.”
“If we get back,” Steorf corrected her gravely, “I don’t want you to ever forget it.”
“All right,” Tazi answered, no longer flippant.
“I know how much it hurt you when Ciredor told you that I was on Thamalon Uskevren’s payroll.”
He watched as Tazi dropped her head. He reached over and cupped her chin in his hand and tilted it up to face him.
“It was true that your father paid me for many years to watch over you as best I could. What you don’t know is that I’ve been watching you far longer than that. I’ve been watching you since we were children.”
“What?”
“Ever since you saved that baby from the midden and Durlan rewarded you with your ring, I’ve followed you. The mage, Durlan, was one of my instructors back then, and he shared your exploits with me,” Steorf explained. “Needless to say, the story made an impression, and I decided one day to see more of you.”
Tazi was surprised, and she had thought she was beyond such things.
“My mother, just like your parents, is very conscious of social allegiances. As the premier mage of Selgaunt, she has to be. My childhood was rather secluded,” he said, and Tazi detected a note of sadness in his voice. It was an aspect of his younger years she had never known before. “I think I stole out at nights for the same reason as you: freedom. Freedom from duties and obligations and watchful eyes.
“As my prowess and skills progressed, your father approached my mother, Elaine. He was hoping to strike a bargain with her. He felt that my abilities were advanced enough that I might be a guard of sorts for you. He reasoned that since we were of a similar age, I could become acquainted with you and you wouldn’t suspect me of anything other than another admirer,” he finished.
“Why didn’t you just come out and tell me the truth?” Tazi said, torn between anger and an emotion she refused to name.
“First,” Steorf replied, “your father rightly suspected that you would resist any offers of protection.”
When Tazi remained silent, Steorf said, “Tell me honestly that if you thought I was a bodyguard you wouldn’t have escaped from me—and had a bloody good time doing it—the first chance you got.”
Tazi lowered her gaze and stifled a giggle, not wanting to wake Fannah.
“I would’ve done a good job of it, too,” she answered when she lifted her head.
“You would’ve tried,” he told her with some of his old cockiness. “But the issue was moot, because my mother refused the whole arrangement. She felt someone would eventually find out about it, and she didn’t want to have too close an alliance with any one member of the Old Chauncel.
“That should have been the end of it, but I caught wind of the bargain and approached your father discreetly to accept his offer. He said he was impressed with my ability to ‘see past my mother’s robes,’ but I secretly suspected he was just pleased to get his way. Little did he realize it was me who was getting my way.
“That was how I managed to live the life I wanted for over seven years. You didn’t know of the bargain I struck with your father, and my mother never discovered my secret outings. I don’t think she would’ve understood. Elaine so wants me to be the next premier mage of Selgaunt. Our forays just don’t fit into that plan.”
“But you do have the talent for the job,” Tazi told him.
“I know I do. I just don’t know if I want it,” he answered. “I want the choice to be mine, not something that is simply foisted onto my shoulders. I want the freedom to choose. You, more than anyone else, know the value of choice.”
Tazi nodded.
“With you,” Steorf went on, “I was free somehow. I recognized that kindred spirit in you. There were many times I wanted to tell you about the deal with your father, but I was afraid of your anger. I hoped you’d never find out. Keeping that secret from you made us both vulnerable to Ciredor. I won’t let that happen again. Not any longer.”
“I wish you would’ve told me from the beginning. I’d like to think I would’ve appreciated the joke on my father,” Tazi replied, though she was not entirely convinced by Steorf’s confession.
“You don’t know that you would’ve. I didn’t want to risk that after I had become so close to you,” Steorf said.
“No, I don’t know for sure what I would’ve done,” she agreed. “We’ll never know nor will we ever get these last two years back that we lost. Now we can only go forward.”
“I hope so.”
“I think we should start to pack up,” Tazi told him.
She wanted to get moving, but she also wanted to have some time to herself, even if it was in the saddle, to mull over Steorf’s revelations. She wanted and needed to believe him, but the wound ran deep, like a fault line in the bedrock of their friendship.
Tazi woke Fannah, who was on her feet straight away. It took only a short time to break down their impromptu camp and pack everything onto their mounts. Tazi inspected them briefly and hoped they had had enough rest.
Don’t fail us, she thought as she stroked the side of her mount. I can’t imagine doing this on foot.
Steorf got them on course, and the three of them traveled for several hours almost in single file. While it made sense to stay as quiet as possible to conserve strength, Tazi knew that Steorf was leaving her to think over what he had told her. She wanted to believe in him again, like she used to.
But how do I go back to the way things were when the trust has been so damaged? she asked herself.
She remembered the answer she had given Steorf: We go forward.
“Steorf …” she said, breaking the silence and spurring her mount ahead.
She was unable to finish her sentence. Fannah let out a short gasp as her mount stumbled and fell to the ground. Tazi and Steorf dismounted swiftly and went over to Fannah and her horse.
“Are you all right?” Tazi asked Fannah as she helped the blind woman to her feet.
“Yes,” she replied, somewhat shaken. “I seem to be in one piece. What’s the matter with my horse? Did it turn a leg in a sinkhole?”
Steorf knelt by the quietly whimpering beast. It had snapped a foreleg in its fall, but there was nothing around to explain why it should have tumbled.
“Should I try to repair the damage?” he asked Tazi.
Her heart went out to the suffering stallion but she knew they had to conserve every bit of their resources and that included Steorf’s strength. She shook her head sadly and knelt by the beast.
She drew her small, razor sharp dagger and said, “I’m sorry.”
She stroked its neck as she prepared to cut his throat, and the horse jerked as her hand neared its jaw. Puzzled, Tazi lay down her dagger and gently opened its mouth.
“Ugh,” she gasped.
It was lined with swollen, black leeches. She expertly slit the animal’s neck to end its suffering, realizing there was nothing more to be done for the creature. Its blood pooled black in the sand around Tazi’s knees. She rose to her feet.
“We need to check the other two,” she told Fannah and Steorf.
Sure enough, both of the other horses’ mouths also contained the bloodsuckers, but to a lesser degree. She and Steorf pried the parasites from the animals’ mouths. As they were almost totally engorged with blood, the leeches came out easily. They squirmed, bloated, on the hot sand. Tazi stomped on them callously and tried to keep her stomach from turning at the moist sounds they made under her boots.
“How did the horses get infested?” Fannah asked after Tazi and Steorf were done with the vermin.
“My fault,” Tazi said, shaking her head once. “I shouldn’t have let the mounts drink from that marshy water at our last stop. It looked clear enough, and I only wanted to conserve our water for as long as possible.
“Your mount,” she told Fannah, “must have been so weakened by blood loss t
hat it stumbled and snapped a leg.”
She went over to Fannah’s horse and began to move the supplies over to Steorf’s mount.
As she struggled angrily with one of the straps on the packs, she told Steorf over her shoulder, “I’ll have Fannah ride behind me, and you can carry the other provisions. Hopefully, that won’t put too much strain on the horses.”
Steorf helped her with the gear and said, “You couldn’t have known. None of us did.”
“But I’ve got to know,” she snapped. “I can’t afford to make any more mistakes out here.”
“We won’t,” he promised her.
Tazi turned away and walked over to where Fannah was waiting for her, looking extremely vulnerable with the massive Calim Desert around her.
“I just can’t fail,” she muttered.
CHAPTER 13
DESERT LIFE
“How is your mount holding up?” Steorf asked Tazi, breaking the hot silence.
“He’s all right,” she replied.
She was certain her horse was as exhausted as they were but they had no choice other than to continue forward and drive the animals on with them. The loss of the third horse was wearing the other two animals down very quickly.
The salt flats had given way to rolling sand dunes as far as Tazi could see, and their progress had slowed considerably. Traction was much more difficult and the two horses were overburdened, which didn’t make it an easier. Tazi recognized that she was becoming inured by the constant sameness of the desert and was mentally wearing down.
“Blue and gold everywhere,” she whispered.
“What was that?” Fannah asked and leaned closer in the saddle to Tazi.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t realize that I had spoken aloud.”
“It’s fine,” Fannah told her through chapped lips. “What is it?”
“Everywhere I look, it’s always the same thing: empty blue sky over unchanging golden-white ground.”
“There is something to be said for constancy,” Fannah quipped, but the joke sounded weak to Tazi.
“I could use some change,” she said quietly.
The three trudged along. Tazi knew they were getting weaker the farther into the desert they went. Tazi refused to allow Steorf to expend any sorcerous strength on anything other than decoding Ciredor’s book. Water was now rationed between them and the mounts since they no longer trusted any of the sporadic water holes they came across to slake their horses’ thirst. They had no way of knowing if the sources were infested by leeches or some other waterborne parasite.
One of the insidious facts about desert travel was that they were all losing moisture through perspiration but the desert wind wicked it away almost immediately. They had no way of accurately gauging how dehydrated they were becoming. Imperceptibly, the wind picked up and shifted.
“Calim’s Breath,” Fannah said.
“What?” Steorf asked.
“Whenever the wind changes direction out here they say it is the djinn, Calim, making his presence known,” she explained.
“I hope he’s trying to bring us some good news,” Steorf commented.
“Look to the east,” Tazi told him excitedly.
“What is it?” Fannah asked.
“I see what can only be a pool of water, not too far away,” she anxiously described to Fannah.
“I don’t think that can be possible,” Fannah replied doubtfully.
“I think Tazi’s right,” Steorf agreed. “It must be a natural pool. I can’t detect anything magical about it.”
“The only pool of water of any noteworthy size that exists out here is what’s known as the ‘Walking Oasis.’ It’s a traveling pool of water and shady trees that appears in a different section of the Calim every year in the spring. By this time of the season, it would be mostly gone, its trees withered and brown.”
“But you don’t know for certain,” Tazi argued. “I think it’s worth investigating.”
“I do as well,” Steorf said. “We could use some more water, as could the horses.”
“It isn’t far,” she said over her shoulder to Fannah. “We’ll ride over to it and check it out, and if I’m wrong we won’t have lost too much time.”
However, no matter how long Tazi and her friends tried to reach the shimmering blue, they never got any closer to the pool. Finally, Tazi had to admit her mistake.
“We might as well stop,” she told Steorf, rubbing the sweat from her eyes. “That has to be some kind of illusion created by the heat. We would have been there by now if it was real.”
Tazi hunched up her shoulders, fully expecting Fannah to tell her she should have trusted her friend’s knowledge of the desert. Once again, Fannah surprised her.
“It was worth the effort,” she told Tazi.
“But I was wrong,” she admitted.
“When you try for the right reasons, there is no wrong.”
Before Tazi could reply to that, both hers and Steorf’s mounts suddenly reared up. Tazi struggled to keep her seat, as did Steorf, but Fannah was caught unaware. She tumbled backward and landed hard on the sand.
As soon as Tazi got her horse under control, she dismounted and went to Fannah.
“Are you all right?” she asked her blind friend.
“As you can see,” Fannah rose and swatted the dust from her robes, “I wasn’t lying when I told you it had been some time since I had been on a horse.”
Tazi smiled in spite of everything.
“How can you stay so cheerful?” she marveled.
“Why should I be anything else? At this moment, I am together with my friends,” Fannah stated simply.
Steorf walked over with both horses’ reins in hand.
“I don’t know what’s got into these beasts,” he said, the strain he was feeling apparent in his voice.
“I don’t know, either, but I’m going to take it as a sign that maybe we should walk a little,” Tazi decided. “They could use the break of not carrying us for a while, and we can stretch our legs at the same time.”
Tazi and Fannah flanked their mount, and Steorf brought up the rear. When Tazi looked back to ask him a question, she could see he was deep in thought. She decided not to interrupt him, as she was certain that he was mentally reviewing Ciredor’s writings and mulling over the words he had managed to translate.
He’s determined, she thought.
Tazi faced forward and found it hard to see that they were making any kind of progress with no landmarks to provide a frame of reference.
“The way the wind blows and shifts the sands, those dunes look like they’re walking,” she remarked to Fannah.
“What wind?” Fannah asked gravely.
Tazi realized that there was no wind around them, and she couldn’t hear any sound nearby, either. The air was still, but the sands continued to alter their direction.
“I don’t understa—” she began then the dunes erupted around them.
The horses reared and whinnied in fear, wrenching themselves free from the grip of their masters. Tazi grabbed Fannah’s arm and hung on to her. She could see that Steorf was also turning about wildly. Everything began to slide into the sand.
“It’s like water,” Tazi screamed to Steorf. “We’re sinking at every turn.”
“Don’t struggle,” Fannah told her. “It only makes it worse.”
Tazi was close to panicking. She had sunk into the sand almost to her shins, but she realized that she was wrong. The ground wasn’t like water. Instead of a constant sinking, the sands shifted and she would found herself immobilized completely as though it had solidified. Then the sands shifted again in opposing directions, and she could feel her feet pulled away from each other.
The horses were screaming, and Tazi turned in time to see that her mount had sunk into the sand so deeply that only its head was still visible. The stallion’s eyes rolled madly in its head when suddenly it fell silent.
Horrified, Tazi could only watch as a fount of blo
od spewed out of its mouth, staining the sands black. As its head was pulled under the dune, one of its forelegs popped up a few feet’s distance away, like a log tossed about on the open seas.
“The dune ripped him apart,” she yelled to Steorf, who had also been mesmerized by the animal’s demise. “These things are alive somehow!”
Her screams snapped him from his stupor, and he somehow managed to wade his way over to Tazi and Fannah.
“We’ve got to get off these things,” he shouted to her. He pointed about thirty feet to the north and said, “It turns back into salt flats over there. I think we might be safe if we can reach it.”
“How can we do that?” Tazi asked.
“Don’t fight the sands,” Fannah told them. “It’s in the timing. You’ve got to move between the shifts.”
Steorf’s mount gave a plaintive shriek, and Tazi turned to see it thrashing about in the dune. It dawned on her that Ciredor’s writings were still in the sack strapped to the surviving horse. They couldn’t afford to lose the only potential weapon they had against the necromancer.
Rolling about as though in an earthquake, Tazi literally placed Fannah in Steorf’s hands.
“Get her out of here,” she said.
“What?” Steorf screamed with an uncomprehending look on his face.
Tazi didn’t waste any time in explanation. Judging by the animal’s plaintive gurgle, Steorf’s horse didn’t have much time. She trusted Steorf to get Fannah to the relative safety of the flats. Trying Fannah’s suggested technique, Tazi slipped between the shifting grains and reached the horse just in time to see it sink.
“No,” she cried in frustration and madly searched with her hands, trying to locate the sack.
She lowered herself deeper into the sand but kept her chin above the surface. Swinging her arms back and forth, she thought one of her fingers hooked onto the sack, but it pulled just out of her reach. She had no choice. Tazi took a deep breath and dived into the dune.
She kept her eyes and mouth squeezed shut, but she could feel the sand fill her nostrils and her ears. She tried hard not to think about that and kept reaching forward with her hands, diving deeper into the dune. She didn’t even contemplate what would happen if she didn’t find it—her left hand slapped the leather strap of the sack, and she closed her fingers around it.
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