Sandstorm

by Christopher Rowe

  Shahrokh’s disappearance was instantaneous and absolute. Without the blue glow, the alley was pitch dark.

  But I can see in the dark, thought Corvus, not realizing it was an interior blackness washing over him. Why can’t I see in the dark?

  The pasha who would be numbered among the elect demands the loyalty of the strong, and holds it only for himself. Likewise, it is only to himself that the pasha tenders loyalty.

  —Erlo Elraedan

  The Blood-Drenched Throne

  Printed and Bound at Calimport

  The Year of Ocean’s Wrath (1212 DR)

  CEPHAS SAT, LEGS CROSSED, AT THE CENTER OF A GLADE of towering trees. The closely trimmed lawn he rested on was on the opposite side of the great circular garden from the cluster of tents.

  Ariella faced him, her legs also crossed. Their knees had to touch because, she said, they must be close enough to join hands. Before they found this secluded spot, she returned to her tent and changed into the same loose-fitting clothes Cephas wore, though she still had her sword. The weapon lay to one side, its tooled scabbard and belt draped over the satchels holding Cephas’s piecemeal armor and double flail.

  She told him to sit quietly and seek a place of peace within himself that matched the peace without. He looked around, and said, “I have not seen trees like these before, though there were only a few different kinds on the highland plains in Tethyr. There were none at all in the canyon, or on the Spires of Mir.”

  Ariella angled her head up at the rugged bark and silver-backed brown leaves in the canopy high overhead. “They’re weirwoods, I think, though I’ve never seen one, either. Said to be rare. But perhaps one of the spires we saw in Argentor was once of a kind with these, before they all changed to stone. Do you find talking about trees brings you to a peaceful state, Cephas?”

  He grinned. “I don’t think I’ve ever talked about trees at all. Unless Grinta the Pike’s advice on the killing of treants counts, though her technique is not peaceful.”

  When Ariella laughed, he remembered that her voice had reminded him of bells the first time he heard it—bells on a weapon harness. Perhaps I don’t know what an inner place of peace is, he thought.

  “You told me you knew thirty-one ways to block a morning star,” she said. “My own fighting style is less formalized than the ways you were taught, I think. But I wonder if any of those ways is a block of the returning swing. Did you ever fall before a blow, then strike while you opponent was extended, so you needed to defend only against the weaker backhand strike?”

  Cephas answered, “The Fluttering Leaf style. I’m no master of it, but I know it. It is better suited for …” He stumbled, not wanting to offend her. “For more delicate fighters than I.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “By which you mean weaker. I am not as strong as you, Cephas Earthsouled, but strength does not win every battle.”

  Cephas pictured bullheaded axemen and spinning silver blades. “I know. I’ve seen Shan and Cynda fight,” he said.

  “Just so. Though I would not look to them to learn peace of mind. The Fluttering Leaf, now, when a practitioner of that art accepts the opening strike, what does he do?”

  A thousand days of drills came to mind. “Well, nothing. The blow falls, and you fall before it. You hold no stance; you raise no warding shield. It passes over you.”

  “You need to take every thought that comes to you and fall before it. Anything that rises up, let it pass by. Even the energy you call the earth-force. Let that flow away. To achieve a Second Soul, a windsoul, you must empty the one you already possess.”

  Cephas tried. The first thing he realized was that trying to think of nothing yielded the opposite of the desired effect. A floodgate of memories, worries, idle thoughts, and unfocused observations was opened by his effort. Her voice sounded like bells.

  “I grow more peaceful inside when you’re talking, Ariella.”

  She smiled. “I will tell you, then,” she said, “that I myself express no other soul than the wind. I have never felt a need to listen for anything other than its call.”

  Cephas said, “But you think you can teach me this trick?”

  “It is not a trick, Cephas. It’s a discipline, like your gladiatorial fighting styles or my sword spells. I can show you how to open yourself to the wind, because I have heard the wind in you.”

  Cephas found that other thoughts ceased to press on him.

  “Those genasi who take on more than one soul are one of the great proofs that we are all one people, despite the differences in our abilities and appearances,” she said.

  “There are others? Other ‘great proofs,’ I mean?”

  Ariella said, “The Firestorm Cabal actually makes one positive contribution. They have kept genealogical records that span centuries and track lineages across different worlds. They don’t publicize this, but their cabal was founded here, in the South. The genasi who first drew swords in the Second Era of Skyfire were Firestormers. They brought their records north and joined them with the annals of my people, and found that the clans and families are related in deep time. Their work is related to the third great proof.”

  “What is that?” Cephas asked.

  Surprising him, she blushed. Her silver cheeks turned the same blue iron shade that colored her crystal hair. “Genasi, no matter which soul they express”—she cleared her throat—“breed true.”

  Cephas found he was at the edge of his experience. “Oh.”

  She laughed. “The Cabalists believe the great clans of earthsouled and stormsouled and all the others should keep their lineages apart. They use words such as ‘pure’ and ‘inviolate.’ When couples of different expressions, well, have children together, for instance, the Firestormers say they’ve blurred the szuldar.”

  Cephas asked, “This is widely believed?”

  She shrugged. “It’s hard to say. There are many who find the idea repellant, this programmatic separation of the expressions. I know I do. And my parents. My father is watersouled, and my mother most often expresses as fire.”

  “Yet you are windsouled?”

  Again came the laughter like bells. “My mother was born windsouled but found the fire suited her better. She is a famous chef in our city. My father has always been watersouled, as has one of my brothers. He followed Father into the Waveriders, the Akanûlan navy.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” said Cephas.

  “I have two. The Waverider is the eldest. My younger brother is windsouled, and says he will join the Airsteppers’ Guild like me. I think he’ll change his mind once he learns it’s something more than an adult version of the races he and his friends run among the skymotes.”

  “The motes of Airspur host better games than Jazeerijah, then,” Cephas said.

  She looked at him. “It’s when you talk about that place that I hear the wind in you the loudest.”

  Cephas despaired of finding the peace of mind she described. “How did your mother learn the firesoul?” he asked. “You said she was not born with that expression.”

  Ariella blushed again, even deeper this time. “Mother’s story …” she said, hesitating. In the short time Cephas had known Ariella, he had never seen her hesitate. “It has to do with a man she knew before my father. She says it involved ‘certain fiery circumstances.’ ”

  Cephas pursed his lips. He did not quite know why that caused Ariella to blush and hesitate, but it gave him an idea.

  “Well,” he said, gazing up at the trees, “perhaps what we need is something related to the powers the windsoul grants. If I learn to fly, we could seek ‘certain heightened circumstances.’ Though I don’t know what those could be.”

  He felt her hand on his chest and thought of lightning.

  “I know something we could try,” she said.

  A time passed that was as endless as the span of a heartbeat.

  After, he felt weightless. Ariella was in his arms, her limbs wrapped around him. She was no burden, though. She did n
ot bear him down, but up.

  Eventually, he opened his eyes and dared to look at her. After the first giddy moments when they untangled each other from their clothes, she had filled up every sense. But still, he suspected that he would never see enough of her, never hear her enough, never feel her strong arms clasped behind his neck enough.

  She was watching him with a smile on her face that was gentle and mischievous both. He twined his fingers in hers and drew her hand to his lips. The silver tones of their skin matched perfectly. Silver tones?

  He looked at her again. She raised her eyebrows, then glanced down. “Maybe we should put our clothes on and go introduce you to the others.”

  He started to ask what she meant, but his voice failed him when he saw their clothes strewn across the glade, far below where they hung, clinging to each other while slowly rotating in midair.

  She kissed him. “Welcome,” she said, “Cephas Windsouled.”

  The WeavePasha’s scrying room had no doors and no windows, and he could count on the ringed fingers of one hand the number of people aware of the chamber’s location: himself, a regrettably deceased apprentice, and the eldest of his grandchildren, the powerful sorceress who served as his chief vizar.

  So he was confident that he was alone and unobserved as he took a cross-legged seat in midair before one of the room’s many untidy workbenches. He swept aside various instruments of minor magic, but he took more care in setting aside a tray of crystal fragments, the clay handle and spout of an inert lamp, and numerous scrolls half covered in his own spidery handwriting. Finally, he found his favored scrying device, a mundane brass-backed mirror of questionable taste and little monetary value.

  He could use this mirror—he had used it—to spy out the secrets of the most powerful beings in Faerûn. Now he breathed magic onto the scratched silver surface of the mirror and whispered syllables of power. “Where are you, Corvus?” he asked.

  “Right here, Your Grace,” said the kenku from behind him.

  The WeavePasha did not turn around. Instead, he found a pen, dipped it in a pool of gelid ink spreading from an overturned pot, and made a note to himself on the closest scroll. Self, dead apprentice, granddaughter, and kenku, he wrote. Aloud, he said, “Do you know, Corvus, that I believe you’re a sort of lodestone for hubris in the mighty? Where intemperate pride is at its greatest, well, there you are. Or rather, here you are.”

  “An interesting theory, WeavePasha, but I have never been to Waterdeep.”

  There was an unusual strained tone in the kenku’s mellifluous voice, and the WeavePasha turned, asking, “How about Calimport?”

  He saw that Corvus bled freely down one leg, leaning on the grim-faced halfling adept, Shan. The spymaster said, “No need, Your Grace. Calimport has come to me.”

  Cynda gave the kitchener’s apprentice a disapproving look and swung a sloshing pail back up onto the cart, using one knee to buck the heavy container over the sideboard.

  “Please, mistress,” the disheartened boy said. “That is very valuable wine, a vintage of your own kin in the Purple Hills. The cost of what you spilled there would pay my wages for a year.”

  Tobin reassured the apprentice. “It would have all been gone if we took it to Trill, now wouldn’t it? The WeavePasha is too generous. This brace of sheep is more than enough, and more like the simple fare she is used to. Though we are grateful for it all, to be sure.”

  The boy still looked doubtful. “The mutton is no simple fare, sir. The spices and herbs the chef used in their preparation are very fine. Their flavors guided my choice of wine. Are you sure the dragon would not like just two or three of these casks?”

  Cynda gave him a firm shake of her head. She spelled out a word in the sisters’ fingertalk.

  “Nonthal?” said Tobin aloud. “That is a town—”

  “In Turmish, yes!” the apprentice said. “They have a wonderful varietal of ruby that would go very nicely with the mutton. Is that the problem? I have plenty of it laid in.”

  But Tobin recalled why Cynda had thought of the town. “Young fellow,” he said, “I am sure you are right about the wines. But you are wrong about Trill. She is a wyvern, not a dragon. And should you ever find yourself in Nonthal, there are many there who can explain why wyverns should never be given wine.”

  With that, Cynda completed her culling of Trill’s midday meal and indicated that Tobin should shoulder the pair of dressed and roasted whole sheep.

  Tobin could never have found his way back to the straw-filled fountain where Mattias waited with the impatient Trill, but Cynda did not hesitate as they walked the branching paths of the artificial woodland. He told this to Cynda, and she smiled, acknowledging his compliment, but also tapped her ears and pointed to his.

  Tobin said, “Well, yes, I suppose that I would not have been lost forever. She does make quite a racket when she’s waiting for her food, doesn’t she? And, of course, if I took too long, she would have come to find me.”

  A voice said, “You’ll not be easily found where you’re going, goliath.” Another voice sounded at the same time, muttering words beneath the first.

  Tobin was counted fast among goliaths, but Cynda was counted fast among the swiftest fighters of the South. By the time he dropped the sheep and brought up his huge fists, she had launched four silvered darts and leaped into a tumbling charge after them.

  The darts struck a transparent barrier, which flashed red long enough for Tobin to see its domed shape and realize that he and Cynda were trapped. Cynda stopped her headlong spring just short of the invisible wall, crouching low, next to where her darts lay in the gravel. A smell of sulfur filled the air, paired with a thin line of smoke trailing from the spot where the four darts had struck.

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” said the firesouled Akanûlan Flamburnt, who stood beside his fellow Firestormer. “There must be something unusual about those darts. No matter, they did not get through.” He paused and glared up at Lavacre, who stared at the wisp of smoke and absently rubbed his throat. When Flamburnt struck him in the side, he remembered himself and hastily muttered in the language of fire.

  Cynda ignored both men. She took up a handful of gravel and tossed one stone at a time against the barrier, working her way around Tobin. She held her short sword drawn in one hand.

  “Testing the strength of my spell, halfling?” Flamburnt asked. “Finding the limits of your cell? Don’t worry, you won’t be in there much longer.”

  Tobin asked, “What are you doing, Flamburnt? We are guests of the same host. We have not raised our hands against you.”

  Cynda suddenly leaped back against Tobin’s legs, holding her sword before her. She kicked up more gravel, and Tobin saw that it now fell much closer to them than it had just a moment before. Already, Cynda’s darts lay outside the shrinking barrier.

  “It looks as though the magic Shahrokh gifted me will not last long, clown,” said Flamburnt. “If your friends are wise, they will forget you. But since you have all bound yourself to Ariella, then they are all certainly fools. They will seek to rescue you. This, as the djinn say, is known.

  “And since there is the barest possibility that you will see the windsouled bitch again before you die, I bid you tell her this. We may be among the lowest ranked at the Motherhouse of the Firestorm Cabal in Akanûl. But we are ranked among the highest at the Sacred Hunter’s Lodge in Memnon.”

  Tobin began to reply but found he could not draw breath to speak. There was no more air in the shrinking dome, as the interior whirled with black and red waves of fiery magic. He crouched, bent over Cynda, and pulled her close.

  And then he knew no more.

  The WeavePasha used tongs to pull out the filthy rags the kenku had stuffed into the wound on his thigh, laying them in a tray to one side. The tray had held a collection of glowing rings a moment before, but the wizard had casually spilled them onto the floor when he cleared the table where Corvus lay.

  The old man sniffed. “Is that … orvas?
Gods above, Corvus, you have to stop reading old books. I have forbidden even the ingredients of this vile concoction from the city, so I know it came from your blade, not this trash you used for bandages.”

  Corvus hissed in pain when the WeavePasha plucked a bloodstained feather from his leg. “It affects only mammals, Your Grace,” he said. “The more common blade oils are less finely formulated. And I would lie here poisoned by my own sword but for my old books and their secrets.”

  The WeavePasha took a clay vial from a rack, removed its cork stopper, and peered at the contents. A doubtful expression crossed his features before he shrugged and turned the vial upside down over Corvus’s leg. Yellow steam boiled from the wound, and Corvus would have fallen from the table as he convulsed had Shan not rushed to hold him.

  “Whatever poison was borne in the mud and garbage of the alley has sickened you well enough. That tincture will boil it out of your blood, though.”

  Corvus snapped his beak open and closed several times. “The choice was between possible infection and certain blood loss. I judged that Shan would find her way over the wall in time to deal with the first, but not the second. And as I was blinded by the djinni’s spells, I could not see what I was using to staunch the flow.”

  The WeavePasha frowned. “Yes, that’s the most troubling aspect of this business. He spoke the truth about only being present by semblance. If a magician of his power had appeared in Almraiven, I would not have been the only one to sense it. As I should have sensed his spellwork this close to the palace. The djinni is digging deep in his stores of knowledge and making use of ancient items of power. He has to be. The question is why. If they’ve discovered my plans for Cephas, there was no need for such a display.”