Sandstorm

by Christopher Rowe

  Mattias pulled a quiver from his back and drew the first of its score of arrows. He stuck its point down in a crack that ran by his feet, then set another there, and another. He set out more and more of the black-fletched shafts as he spoke.

  “I am doing what I’ve always intended, Corvus,” he said. “I am offering up my own secret at last. I am telling you why I have stayed by your side, through blood and darkness, tempering what I could and mourning what I could not. Telling you why I’ve made this journey of—gods, has it been forty years?”

  Corvus waved his hand impatiently. “Shan,” he said, “climb down to the camp and gather all the food and water you can carry. Ariella, you remember the way to the coast? Go ahead, scout a route around any spiderfolk who still live. The dhow I piloted must have washed ashore on the tide, and with luck—”

  “With all the luck in the world, with the goddess Tymora flying down to kiss your lipless mouth, we would make it the length of a drunkard’s song,” said Mattias. Anger flooded his voice. “Corvus Nightfeather! Death and doom approach, and they will not be stayed by your schemes! Our enemies have unbarred the gates of hell and set a hunter against us who will never pause, except for blood!

  “But you can save these people. You can save yourself. I will do what I have always intended.”

  “What are you talking about, Mattias?” asked the kenku. “What are you going to do?”

  Cephas heard notes in Corvus’s voice he never imagined he would. He heard pain. He heard bewilderment, and grief.

  “Ah, there it is, finally,” said Mattias, and he must have been talking about the demon, because he plucked an arrow from the ground, drew it to his cheek, and released. A tremendous explosion sounded in the night.

  He turned, one last time, to Corvus.

  “I am going to ensure your escape.”

  Trill did not protest.

  This shocked Cephas as much as anything else. Mattias paused in his shooting just long enough to put his hand on the wyvern’s head and say, “Take our friends as far as you can, girl, then flee north. Find others of your kind in the mountains. Stay far from the settlements of men and elves. You are free.”

  The wyvern relaxed her grip on the balanced tor and fell away. The sound of her wings rose up from below, then was lost in another devastating release of magic from one of the ranger’s arrows. At the last instant, Shan leaped after Trill, darting past Mattias so that her shoulder brushed against his blurring hand. When the wyvern wheeled around with open claws, the halfling’s face was visible between her wings, white against the boiling clouds of black on the plain behind them.

  Cephas and Ariella did not get to say good-bye before they were swept up.

  “The kenku!” called Ariella.

  Cephas looked down. The spider demon seemed to grow ever larger even as they retreated, but Mattias and Corvus were small figures on the distant rock. Corvus was leaning close to the ranger, as if he were saying something. Shadows rose and Trill dipped in her flight.

  “He is above now, with Shan,” Cephas said.

  The sounds of the ranger’s arrows were a long time in the fading, and were still discernible when Trill dived and deposited the four companions on the western bank of another petrified river. She did not pause after the halfling and the kenku slid from her saddle, even though Cephas approached with the intent of cutting her harness clear. The wyvern leaped back into the air, dipped her wing in something that might have been parting, and flew away, back to the east.

  “She is ignoring Mattias’s wishes,” said Cephas. “She is going back to fight with him.”

  Corvus shouldered his pack and started walking away from the river. “She is going back to die with him.”

  Shan scrambled after Corvus, but Ariella and Cephas stood for a moment, torn between listening to the sounds of battle behind them and trekking after the kenku.

  “Is that what he told you on the rock?” Cephas called.

  “No more words passed between us than what you heard,” Corvus replied. “Now come on. These are the banks of the old Volomir River, still short of the desert. But we can be there by dawn.”

  Another blast, the loudest yet, sounded behind them. Cephas imagined he heard Trill’s battle cry in it.

  They walked through the dark, the way clear beneath bright stars. For a long time, none of them spoke.

  When Corvus broke the silence, it was clear to the others that they should not respond.

  “Well, he was a fool, of course,” said the kenku. “He spent his whole life making the wrong decision every time he was presented with a choice.

  “He might have been a scholar, if you can imagine that. For all that he was raised among woodsfolk who valued tracking more highly than reading, he had a sharp mind and his family valued it, at least enough to send him to schools in the Silver Marches towns during the winters. He always went back when the thaws came, though. Always back to the forests.

  “So, he decided to become another anonymous ranger. The North is full of them. But it turned out—and I suppose this is something that might have proven valuable if he had actually followed through—it turned out that Mattias Farseer was destined to be the greatest archer the world has ever seen.

  “You think you have seen him shoot? In Berdusk, they sing a song about the flight of a single arrow he loosed when he was nineteen years old.

  “But he was a fool, as I said, and chose a lesser path.

  “These northland rangers, you see, in the main they train as swordsmen or archers, but some among them set those ways aside in favor of the companionship of animals, can you believe it? Even Mattias wasn’t fool enough to hold such an intention, but, that shot out of legend? The one from the song? He felled a striking wyvern from a thousand paces away. The beast was feeding off a village’s sheep herd and they hired him to save their spring lambs.

  “He took less gold than he deserved and headed home. On the way, he heard a cry in the forest. There was a nest, and a single fledgling wyvern. When she saw him, she attacked. No larger than a dog, but she was all claws and teeth. He could have shot her dead, of course, but remember this is a story about a fool. She ripped open his belly and shattered his hips, and he never even drew his dagger.

  “And they both lived, somehow. He sewed up his own guts and survived the fire in the blood that comes with that kind of wound. He brought her a roebuck to feed on when he finally managed to take one down. His aim was off, because of the fever, I suppose, or the deer could hear him dragging himself through the woods.

  “But they both lived. And after they could travel, they found that they had to move farther and farther south. Farther and farther away from civilized people who wanted nothing to do with a wyvern. Farther from woodlands that had no place for a crippled ranger.

  “And do you know, that even after all that, he managed to do something even more foolish? Do you know what he did?

  “He joined the circus.”

  In her workroom, Munaa yr Oma el Jhotos, High Vizar of Almraiven, collapsed onto a couch. Drawing in the demon’s leash had proven far more difficult than she anticipated.

  She held no illusions about her own powers. She might be counted among the mighty in a city famous for its mages, but the making of the leash was far beyond her. It had been very nearly outside her ability to hold it.

  But the demon was once again imprisoned in the apostoleum beneath the plain. Her grandfather’s bindings were woven anew. She was confident they would hold.

  She considered whether the risk had been worth the taking. The el Jhotos heir had escaped, along with her grandfather’s former assassin and one or two others.

  Pouring the last of the wine she’d brought from the WeavePasha’s sanctum, she decided that, on balance, the night must be judged a success. She had not managed the death of the one her grandfather thought might one day be a threat, but she had managed the death of the one he feared.

  Exhausted, she raised the glass to her lips, then spit out the wine.
/>   It had gone bitter.

  The efreet have flesh like a man,

  and blood like a man.

  But their minds are fire,

  and they have no souls at all.

  —Janessar Proverb

  THE DESERT HAD A VOICE, AND IT WAS BOTH WIND AND earth.

  Sometime in the last hours of the night, between Corvus’s unacknowledged eulogy of Mattias and the rising of the sun at their backs, the ground they trudged across changed in character, as spell-warped stone gave way to salt and sand.

  The wind rose with the sun, and when he heard it, Cephas looked to Ariella, seeking confirmation that it carried a strangeness on it. But the woman did not raise her head. Like the others, she walked forward with a drawn face and an exhausted gait. If she heard anything unusual in the air, she did not speak of it.

  They all heard the first cracks from the ground, though. As he had been since Trill left them, Corvus was at the front of their ragged line. He stumbled backward, falling into Shan when the sharp series of staccato blasts sounded from the ground before him. A sheet of sand flew up, marking the path of a fissure that appeared with the threatening noise.

  The ground beneath them shifted, and Cephas caught Ariella’s hand, the two of them clinging to each other for balance. After a moment more of rumbling, the trembling in the ground subsided, followed by a hissing sound as fine white sand rushed down a slope into the crack that broke the exposed bedrock.

  “An earthquake,” said Ariella. “They are common along the southern coasts of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The tectonic force of the earthsouled, but on a tremendous scale.”

  Cephas took a water skin proffered by Shan and nodded thanks. “Natural then,” he said, passing the water to Ariella. “Elder Lin’s Old Mother waking to greet the day.”

  Corvus waved Shan away when she brought the water to him. He had a kerchief of homespun cloth in one hand, and he knotted it into a headpiece that hooded his eyes.

  “Not natural,” he croaked, taking up the slow pace once more. “Not here.”

  Exhaustion and grief kept Cephas quiet throughout the endless morning. Time was hard to measure when the sun loomed so large, but it was high in the sky, and the last signs of the badlands had disappeared behind them, when he decided to remind Corvus of Mattias’s assurances to them.

  “This is the morning Corvus Nightfeather finally tells the whole truth about something,” Cephas said, surprised by the bitter tone in his voice.

  Corvus came to an immediate halt, and in that instant, Cephas realized the kenku frightened him like no other person or beast he had ever known.

  “No, Shan,” said Corvus, without turning.

  Cephas looked down and saw that the halfling woman’s parrying knife lay along the inside of his thigh, its wicked edge pressing a furrow into his silver skin along the major artery there. Shan was not watching him, but he could see there was no expression on her face beyond exhaustion.

  He stayed still and counted three heartbeats pulsing against the knife’s edge before she rolled the blade over the back of her hand, crisply sheathed it, and walked on, passing Corvus to take the lead.

  She paused when Ariella spoke. All three of the others, Corvus joining Shan and Cephas, turned when Ariella said, “Adept.” The swordmage’s blade was out of its scabbard, the pure white light coiling about it visible even in the highsun glare. “You would have died with him.”

  Shan raised her gaze to meet Ariella’s, still expressionless. If any communication passed between the women, Cephas did not understand it. Shan simply turned and walked on.

  “Wait,” said Corvus. “Cephas is right. The old man meant to buy more than time, and I owe him an attempt at honesty.”

  Shan stopped, but did not turn around. She stood, her stance wavering slightly, staring west. I have never seen anyone so tired, thought Cephas. He realized, as he thought it, that he was ignoring Corvus’s words. Perhaps it was already too late. Perhaps the dawn was the only time for such a telling, coming as it did between the darkest part of the night and the first glimmers of light. A time of shadows.

  “The WeavePasha, on my advice, meant to make a weapon of you,” said Corvus.

  Cephas thought, I am already a weapon. He thought this as he pulled his double flail from the clips on his armored shoulders, diving to one side, because he saw that Shan was not wavering as he’d thought. The halfling woman was not trembling in exhaustion but in preparation, seeing what he did; the giant, fiery warriors striding toward them from the west.

  “No!” shouted Corvus, as Ariella, too, made ready for battle, casting a glamour on her sword and calling the wind, rising into the air. “These are the ones we expected, the guardians I told you would come!”

  Even Shan was confused by the kenku’s words, shooting him a questioning look and hesitating, darts at the ready. Cephas counted six crimson-skinned brutes who doubled him in height, and at least that many smaller figures among them, one of whom floated on a pillar of fire. Ariella shouted, “Those are efreet coming! Not djinn!”

  A deep voice came from above. “The djinn, little sister, are already here.”

  And they were, descending on every side by the dozen.

  The djinn outnumbered the efreet, but the huge warriors among the fiery elementals did not appear concerned. Bare-chested and sporting gleaming white horns, unarmored except for brass rings woven into their kilts, the efreet, acting as bodyguards to the one they called the cinderlord, wielded massive bronze tulwars, weapons so huge that Cephas doubted even Tobin could lift one. Thinking of the goliath and his likely fate, Cephas grimaced.

  The cinderlord was the smallest among the efreet, but he was the only one whose clothing and accoutrement came close to matching the finery that even the djinni soldiers wore.

  Unlike the efreet, the djinn appeared to have no legs. The silver and blue skin of their bared torsos gave way to whirling cyclones of the same colors. There were swordsmen among them, and staff-wielding magi, and three women with metallic bows who stayed high above the makeshift meeting ground where Cephas and his companions stood, disarmed and immobilized by magic.

  “Why aren’t they battling?” asked Cephas.

  For the first time since he met her, Ariella spit. “Because the kenku has no plans to honor his friend’s last wishes, is my guess.”

  Corvus must have heard her, though he did not respond. He had not spoken since the parties of elemental entities surrounded them, setting the companions up like pieces on a game board. Shan heard, but her reaction was not directed at Ariella. She leveled a troubled stare at the back of the kenku’s head.

  “Last wishes?” said the cinderlord, hissing like steam from wet wood thrown on a hot fire. “Are you granting wishes again, Shahrokh? First, I wish that all mine come out the way I imagine them. That is one.”

  The laughter of the other efreet was like a forest fire.

  Shahrokh, the huge djinn man who had announced their presence to Ariella, waited for the efreet to quiet before he responded. “My little sister speaks of the late Mattias Farseer, son of fire. This last night, he fell to the demon that rules the Plain of Stone Spiders.”

  The cinderlord’s ruby eyes held no pupils, so Cephas could not tell which of the prisoners in particular he was looking at when he leaned down, studying them. “There is much news in what you say, son of air. The WeavePasha makes use of the Spider That Waits after keeping it leashed for a century? A mythic champion troubles us no longer?” The blaze of the lord’s hair roared, and it leaned even closer. “One among our captives is of the Long Lost?”

  “Do not trouble yourself, son of fire,” said Shahrokh. “You recognize the kenku. You see there are windsouled here, and one of them is the returned heir of Marod el Arhapan. But he does not require the cleansing you agreed to perform. He escaped the Almraivenar’s city before any traps were set in him.”

  The efreeti examined first Cephas, then Ariella, pupil-less eyes flickering up and down. A tongue of fire, somehow immobile
, appeared between his white fangs, and the tip of his enormous red nose trembled.

  “No,” he agreed. “There is nothing of mortal magic about this pair, except in the armor they both wear and in the one’s paltry blade, which I see you have locked. This pleases me. Participating in your tiresome plots with the Calimien vassals was the most odious part of this business.”

  Shahrokh glowered. “Be thankful, son of fire, that we are so close to realizing our shared goal. You are far from Memnon, and my warriors are well practiced at snuffing out flames.”

  The cinderlord chuckled, and sparks flew from his mouth. “The pride of the djinn. So vast. So easily injured.”

  The djinni growled. “I have suffered your stink in my nostrils long enough. Your role here, since I have no need of your scouring flames, is only to witness the return. Once that is confirmed, you may return to Memnon to ensure the match, and when the moon has turned, we will meet again in the Teshyllal Wastes, each with his half of the manuscript.”

  “That is my most fervent wish, son of air, as you well know. If the kenku has done as you say, I trust that you will take steps to ensure you do not lose your half yet again.”

  Thunder sounded, but the wind that rose with it held no hint of rain. “There will be no further delays, son of fire,” Shahrokh said. “Corvus Nightfeather, you are released from my bonds. The path to your demi-planar cache is restored.”

  Corvus’s shoulders sagged, and Cephas realized that the invisible bonds holding the kenku must have been much tighter than those that held him and the others.

  “What is this, Corvus?” he asked. “Am I this missing half?”

  Corvus said, “I am sorry,” though he did not seem to be speaking to anyone present.

  The kenku walked a few steps away from the others and passed his ebony claws before his breast feathers. His hand darted in, and when it came out, it held an object Cephas recognized. Gripped in the kenku’s taloned hand was Azad the Free’s Book of Founding Stories.