“You warned us of nothing,” she replied. “And we had no idea this was your valley. Why would you need all this land?”
“Never you mind that, girl. Mayhap t’were not you, after all. Kalipher would have remembered a cripple. But you are intruders, the lot of you, and Kalipher don’t like intruders. Not one bit.”
“We’re only passing through,” Koyt assured the hermit. “We’ll be gone in no time.”
“After you have made liberal use of his spring, Kalipher has no doubt!”
“We had thought to drink from it, but surely the three of us can’t deplete such a rich spring.”
“Lies gush from your mouth as blood from a split skull! You’ve no idea how rich it is, unless you have been here before!”
“We could see the band of greenery around it,” Sellis said. “From yon hills. To me that indicates a healthy flow.”
“We seek no trouble, Kalipher,” Myrana said. The hermit appeared every bit as mad as she had feared. “We want only to cross the valley in peace, perhaps taste of the spring’s fresh water, and leave you alone.”
“Mayhap you seek no trouble, cripple, but trouble you’ve found!” He clapped his hands together, performed a gesture, shouted some words Myrana didn’t understand. When he showed his palms again, a blast of intense heat blew toward the travelers.
A patch of sparse grass near Myrana’s feet burst into flames. So did the edge of her sarami. She slapped out the fire, but Kalipher was already sending another blast their way.
Koyt loosed his arrow at the hermit. Before it had covered half the distance, the hermit flicked his fingers at it and the arrow caught fire. It sailed on for another instant as a burning arrow, then charred into ash, lost its momentum, and drifted harmlessly to the ground.
“Take cover!” Sellis said.
Her pains and weariness forgotten, Myrana darted for the shelter of the nearest large rock. Kalipher shot another bolt of heat her way. It missed, and there wasn’t much around to burn, but a stray twig caught fire. Then she was behind the rock, breathing hard, wondering how to battle an opponent who couldn’t be touched.
Koyt ducked behind a different rock, and Sellis sought shelter behind a fallen length of tree that had been there so long it had petrified. Koyt drew three arrows from his quiver, nocked the first, and fired it. In less than a heartbeat, he fired the second and then the third, the bowstring twanging so quickly that one sound still lingered on the air when the next drowned it out.
None of the three found their mark; Kalipher crisped them all mid-flight.
“Stones!” Myrana cried. “He can’t burn stones!” She selected a good-sized one and hurled it at the hermit. It sailed true, but fell short. Sellis picked up a larger, flat stone and side-armed it as one might a discus. Kalipher tried to deter it with his fiery blast, but it hurtled through, striking him in the ribs. He lost his balance and toppled from the boulder.
While he was on the ground, Koyt fired another arrow. This one got closer before burning up.
“Save your shafts!” Sellis called. “We’ll doubtless need more before we’re home again!”
Myrana threw another stone, putting all her strength behind it. This one reached the hermit, but he batted it away, suffering, she hoped, a bruised hand in the doing. She ducked back behind her sheltering rock and cast about for another stone she could hurl that far. She needed another way. Casting stones would never hurt this wild hermit.
“No!” Kalipher shouted as a huge tangle of vines with dozens of closed white flowers rose in front of him. “Villainy most foul!” He blasted at the flowers, causing some of them to blacken, smoke curling up from them. But others swiveled toward him and opened their petals. Reflective sap coating those petals of the burnflower caught the sun’s light and shone it in concentrated form at the hermit. His gray robe smoldered in numerous places, then exploded in flames. The last she saw of him, he was running toward the shelter of his little rock home, smacking at the fire and screaming curses.
“Where did that burnflower come from?” Sellis asked as she limped toward them.
Myrana shrugged. “Perhaps he was somehow using its heat to attack us,” she speculated. “And caused it to manifest before him.”
“Good an explanation as any I can think of,” Sellis said. “Let’s get away before he returns.”
They started off once more, heading directly for the spring on the far wall. Before they had taken fifteen paces, Kalipher’s furious voice sounded behind them. “You haven’t seen the last of Kalipher!” he cried. “The next intruders in Kalipher’s valley will taste Kalipher’s true wrath, this Kalipher swears!”
“Let’s make sure it’s not us,” Myrana said. “I’d as soon never see Kalipher again.”
“I agree. There’s nothing here we’d need anyway,” Sellis said. He laughed—but he hurried his pace, just the same.
2
Siemhouk lounged on her pillows, chatting with three of her fellow—but lesser—templars, all as naked as she, when her brother came to the door. “Sister!” Dhojakt barked. “I would speak with you. Alone!”
Siemhouk lifted her eyebrows, and the templars took her meaning. They rose, bade hurried goodbyes, and departed, squeezing through the door to avoid any physical contact with the monstrous form that her father insisted was related to her. He shifted his cilops-like lower half, on its dozens of short, pointed legs, to let them pass.
He wanted something from her, otherwise he wouldn’t have pretended at politeness.
“Come in, then,” Siemhouk said, showing her impatience. The templars had been boring, their chatter inane, their machinations and the ambitions they served petty. But then, few in Nibenay were her intellectual equals. Dhojakt, perhaps. Still, she hated talking to him if it meant having to look at him. His centipede’s legs twitched as he skittered into the room, hooked claws clicking on the floor. He was more human from the waist up, but that insectlike lower section protruding from his sarami was too unpleasant to look at. At least had the good grace to spend most of his time in the shadows.
“You needn’t have snapped,” she told Dhojakt as he settled his ridiculous form. “My friends would have gone if you had asked me with the respect I deserve.”
“Were they offended?” Dhojakt asked. He scratched his muzzle with one hand, as human as hers, but that face—the flaring nostrils, the tiny ears flush with the bottom of his jaw, the bulging eyes, so like the single orb of a cilops but paired, and smaller—was decidedly not. “And is there some reason you believe I care?”
“I know you care not in the least,” Siemhouk said. “And honestly? It’s true, most of our father’s wives are insipid creatures who can’t formulate a thought more complex than to wonder if Father cares more for some other wife than he does them. But I’m human, after all.” She emphasized the word, jabbing him with it like a dagger. “I need company from time to time.”
“Not I,” Dhojakt said. His high voice had an unpleasant rasp to it, like a hinge rarely used. “I need only my studies to keep me company.”
Looking like you do, Siemhouk thought, then broke it off. It would be too easy for him to read her mind, and although she could block him just as easily, who knew what he might pick up in that initial probe?
“Is that what brings you here?” she asked. “Something you’ve learned?”
“I was in Father’s private library,” he said. She knew it well: corridor upon corridor lined with shelves, from the floor to a ceiling so high up it took tall ladders to reach the upper sections, and one had to carry a candle or lantern aloft because the light from the wall lamps didn’t reach that high. If there was a larger collection of knowledge anywhere on Athas, she didn’t know of it.
“And?”
“And I discovered some interesting information.”
“About what?”
“About Akrankhot.”
“That city that Kadya is looking for?”
“Don’t feign ignorance, dear sister, it isn’t becoming. I know tha
t you campaigned to have Kadya lead the expedition to Akrankhot. I know that a dead man promised huge stores of metal could be found there, and I understand as well as you the strategic significance of that metal to Nibenay, as well as the benefit to whoever is responsible for fetching it back here.”
“Little escapes you, my brother.”
“Precious little indeed. But I believe I have learned something about Akrankhot that escaped you.”
“Hardly surprising, since I know nothing of the city save what the undead mercenary told us.” Siemhouk shifted her position on the silk pillows. She was growing bored again, and wanted her brother to get to the point. “Will you share what you’ve learned?”
“I suppose.” Of course he would; that was the reason he had come here. Just telling her that he knew something wasn’t nearly satisfaction enough for him.
Dhojakt shifted his many feet again, and picked up a pillow in the claws of a couple. As he spoke, he tore the pillow apart, scattering shreds here and there. “Eons ago, in a time that some scholars call the Gray Age, a war between gods and primordials had ended, but left Athas in a troubled way. Arcane magics had become prevalent, although not nearly to the extent that defiling magic later savaged the world.”
“Defiling magic you’re happy to use, when it suits you,” she pointed out.
“I never said otherwise. At any rate, the primordials, in their battle against the gods, ripped the very fabric of the world. Who knows what they let in, during that time, from the Gray or the Astral Sea? And who knows what the primitive but powerful magics being employed here did to whatever dared enter? At any rate, according to these histories I found, one being that became troublesome in those days was a demon known as Tallik. Perhaps this demon was summoned by some fledgling sorcerer, who then proved unable to control it. There were others about, however, with power enough to intercede, and one of them, or several, imprisoned Tallik beneath what was, at the time, a major city.”
“Let me guess,” Siemhouk said. The story had entertained her, momentarily, but the ending was too easily grasped. And she had already glimpsed the demon’s work, in the undead man who had journeyed all the way to Nibenay to tell the Shadow King about the discovery. “Under Akrankhot.”
“That’s right. So at your suggestion, a templar loyal to you is about to disturb the prison of a demon—one not powerful to stand against the primordials who slew gods, but quite possibly more than powerful enough to threaten all of Athas as we know it.”
“Sounds exciting,” Siemhouk said. “If it brings some color to our lives, then—”
Dhojakt interrupted his sister. “If it’s excitement you want, I can tell Father. His reaction should offer quite a large respite from boredom.”
Now Siemhouk was intrigued. She had to think fast, to strategize. Dhojakt wouldn’t threaten to tell Father unless there was something in it for him—he had to think that Father would be pleased enough by this knowledge to reward him in some way. Why would it please Father? Because if the demon were to become a threat, better to know about it in advance, to be able to prepare for its coming? Or because the possibility existed that the demon, more than the metal, might become a weapon Nibenay could wield against his foes?
If he thought that freeing it from its prison was a dangerous idea, then might he not blame Siemhouk for pursuing the undead mercenary’s story with such fervor? Better, perhaps, to wait until the city was found, and they knew if the demon yet lived, before taking steps either way.
“Why would you tell him?” she asked, the very picture of naive innocence.
“Because it’s something he should know. But I don’t have to. I know you have a reason for sending Kadya on the expedition. I even understand it. All I want is for you to share the rewards, be they gold or good feelings.”
“And if I don’t, you’ll tell Father about this Tallik?”
“That’s correct,” Dhojakt said.
“Go ahead. Let me know what he says.” She had made the calculation that, with permission granted, Dhojakt would never tell their father. He would think that she wasn’t concerned about Nibenay finding out, so there was a better angle for him in keeping it quiet.
Dhojakt rubbed his shaved head with one of those oddly human hands. “I think I’ll wait,” he said. “Perhaps there’s no need for Father to know just yet.”
“I could tell him …” Siemhouk offered.
“That surely will not be necessary,” her brother said. “When the time is right, I’ll let him know. Until then … well, why trouble him? We don’t even know if this Tallik is alive or dead. And if alive, if he yet possesses any power whatsoever. No, let’s hold off, for now.”
“As you wish, brother.”
Dhojakt started to turn around, a process that took his ungainly body a considerable amount of space and time. “As always, dear sister, visiting with you has been a pleasure and an enlightenment.”
“And the same to you, Dhojakt,” Siemhouk said, inordinately pleased to see the last of him. “Do come back whenever you’ve a mind to.”
3
Djena paced about the Council Chambers at the Temple of the King’s Law, running her hands through her gray hair, aggravated beyond belief at some of her templar wives. Wives loyal to her sat in thronelike chairs similar to the ones high consorts used at Council meetings.
“Of course we have spies in the caravan!” she said, at a level barely below a scream. “I’m positive every high consort has spies in the caravan. What I haven’t seen is any useful information.”
“What is it you need to know?” Lijana asked. She was one of Djena’s oldest allies, a woman who had become a wife just a couple of years after Djena and understood early on that Djena’s route to power in the king’s court could not be denied. She had been right—Djena had walked over the bodies of dozens of other wives to get where she was. Some of those bodies had been figurative, others quite literal. The High Consort of the King’s Law was the most powerful person in the city-state, second only to their husband himself, and so that position became Djena’s goal.
At the time, Siemhouk had not yet been born. No one could have known the king’s daughter would overturn his rigidly organized hierarchy.
“I need to know what Kadya has in mind. I’m certain she’s talking with Siemhouk. But Siemhouk is already more powerful than me, so what does she stand to gain? And what has she promised Kadya? My position?”
“She couldn’t possibly,” Pasumi said. Pasumi was young, beautiful, and Djena knew that to underestimate her ruthlessness would be a disastrous error. She had drawn Pasumi into her confidence because she recognized in the stunning new wife a kindred spirit, someone she wanted to keep a close eye on. Of all the templar wives brought into the family in the past five years, this was the one she most expected to make a play for her spot.
She never would have expected such a move from Kadya. From Siemhouk, though, anything was possible. If Siemhouk could replace her with Kadya, that would cement her control over the two most important temples, and therefore over most of the city-state. Her power would be almost on a level with Nibenay’s.
That was what she feared, and why she wanted a better conduit into the communication between Siemhouk and Kadya.
“She might, Pasumi,” Djena said. She stopped pacing, and shook out her hair. She must have looked a sight, like someone on the verge of a mental breakdown. She blew out a breath. “Don’t put anything past Siemhouk. She is my sister, my husband’s daughter, and I love her as I love life itself. But she is as ambitious a templar as has ever lived. I have achieved my goal, and attained a position from which I can help our land and its inhabitants. Someday I’ll be asked to stand down in favor of someone with new ideas. But that time is not now, and that person should not be Kadya. If we can’t find out what those two are saying to each other, though, then Kadya it may be. We need to know what Kadya reports to Siemhouk, and without waiting for Siemhouk herself to give us what are certainly very unfaithful adaptations of those report
s.”
“What would you have us do, sister?” Lijana asked.
“Each of you knows someone on that expedition, I’d wager,” Djena said. “Make sure they’re sparing no effort at intercepting any communication between our beloved sisters Siemhouk and Kadya. And make sure that your allies here in Nibenay with experience in the Way are trying to glean the contents of those conversations on this end. We must know the truth about what they find, what they would do with it, and when it will return to Nibenay, and we must know it as soon as Siemhouk herself does. If we can’t, then I fear that all is lost.”
Djena plopped down into her usual seat, satisfied for the moment with her diatribe. She had overstated the case. There would still be time to react to whatever the expedition brought back, even after its arrival. But it would be more difficult then, the results of that reaction less certain. Forewarning was the best defense she could hope for. She had needed to throw a scare into her allies, to make sure they and their loyalists weren’t being lazy or duplicitous.
If Djena went down, they all did. That was the most important fact they had to bear in mind. Those who had tied themselves to Djena were all in trouble, if Siemhouk and Kadya were successful.
That couldn’t be allowed to happen.
IX
CITY UNDER THE SAND
1
Aric and Ruhm rode inside an argosy, not because it was comfortable—the sun pounded on the armored roof and walls, and even with the open windows, Aric felt like they were riding inside his forge—but because Kadya had insisted, after the halfling attack, that he be kept as safe as possible. She pointed out that had he been inside an argosy in the first place, he would have been in little danger.
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