by Jon Sprunk
The sandy waste continued ahead of them for as far as he could see. This was, he comprehended with a shock, what they called a desert. He'd heard of such places. Apparently the east was rampant with them, great dry seas of sand where a man could die of thirst in hours. The sun's heat became even more oppressive as the day wore on, but Horace didn't die, though he began to feel light-headed and his mouth became so dry he couldn't summon enough saliva to swallow.
“What is this place?” he croaked.
“The Iron Desert,” the big man said.
Horace blinked and tried to clear his throat. “So you speak Arnossi.”
“I'm better with Nimean. Arnossi is too hard. The words have too many meanings.”
Horace might have laughed if his situation weren't so dire. He held out his hand. “I'm Horace from Arnos. From Tines, specifically. What's your name?”
The big man ignored the offered hand. “Jirom, son of Khiren of the Muhabbi Clan.”
“Good to meet you, Jirom. Where are you—?”
A guard walked by, brandishing his whip, and Horace closed his mouth. Jirom faced forward as if he hadn't said anything. The procession stopped for a break at midday. A man came around with the water barrel, and Horace gulped down the cup offered to him. While they rested, he shaded his eyes against the intense sunlight and tried to make out the landscape ahead, but all he could see were a few clouds in the eastern sky, highlighted in gold. And more sand. Leagues of it.
Keeping an eye on the guards, Horace leaned over to Jirom, who lay beside him, stretched out on the hot sand. “So you're obviously not Akeshian. Where are you from?”
“The Zaral, far to the south and west.”
Horace had heard of such a place, supposedly a land of vast plains and mountains that touched the sky. “How did you get all the way up here? It has to be…” He tried to calculate the distance in his head from his recollection of seafarers’ maps. “…at least five hundred leagues.”
“Closer to a thousand. But I've been farther from my homeland than this.”
Jirom listed all the distant lands he'd traveled as a sellsword, some of them places Horace had never heard of before. “That's incredible,” Horace said, trying to imagine all those years away from home. He gestured to the man's iron collar. “So what happened?”
“I ended up on the wrong side of the wrong war. I was given the choice between death and becoming a slave. Now I fight for our masters’ pleasure.”
Horace studied the man beside him. A hardness showed through past the scars and raw branding welts that marred his dark skin, until you looked into his eyes. Rather than the dull, brutish eyes Horace might have expected in a foreign mercenary-turned-gladiator, Jirom's gaze held quiet intelligence. “Do you have a wife back in the Zaral? Children?”
Horace regretted the questions as soon as he asked them. He most of all should have known better than to inquire about someone's family.
Yet Jirom answered without ire. “No. No one.”
Horace was quick to change the subject. “So what lies ahead for us?”
“I've heard that the priests of Akeshia worship their gods with blood. Perhaps we go to our deaths on their altars, but I won't kneel for them like a goat. They'll have to fight if they want to feed me to their demons.”
Gaz glanced at them in alarm but said nothing. Horace nodded. He liked the big man's attitude.
After a short rest, the caravan resumed its trek. The sand dunes became taller until they often blocked out the horizon like long, rippling hills. Dust devils chased each other across the desert floor. Whenever one approached the procession, some of the slaves muttered words that sounded like prayers and touched their foreheads. Each time this happened, Gaz clutched his talisman to his chest, but Horace didn't see anything menacing about the tiny whirlwinds.
Not long after high noon, the caravan was reaching the top of a dune when Horace spotted a pair of reddish-brown dots on the horizon ahead. The spots grew with each passing mile, from small pebbles to narrow boulders until they were finally revealed as towering pillars of rock. Eventually, Horace began to notice features carved into the stones. They were statues.
“Holy God,” he whispered.
He tried to guess their height but stopped after his estimation surpassed two hundred feet. He couldn't imagine the technical skill required to construct such immense effigies. They must have taken an army of artisans years to finish.
The road passed between the statues, giving Horace the chance to see them up close. The colossus on the left was male, the right female. Both were carved standing up. The male statue wore only a long skirt down to his ankles and a crown of circles on his brow. The female had a long gown belted just under her high breasts. Her head was unadorned, her long hair hanging down past her shoulders. Both had expressions of peaceful serenity, or so it appeared to Horace. He wondered who they were supposed to be. Guardian totems? If so, they weren't very frightening except for their titanic proportions.
Horace was so preoccupied with the statues he didn't notice the view beyond them. Several gasps made him turn forward and look down into the canyon of deep red stone that opened before them. Lord Isiratu's wagon had already started down the road, which cut through the center of the valley, but Horace's gaze was drawn to the structures built along the steep walls on either side. They looked like stone palaces, scores of them. Most had extravagant entrances with columned arcades and statuary, surrounded by high walls. A few of the larger edifices had two or even three layers of concentric fortifications. Yet he saw no people among the buildings.
“The Valley of Souls.”
Horace looked to Jirom, who had stopped a few paces in front of him. “What is it?”
The big man looked back. “A city of tombs.”
Horace gazed about in awe as the caravan descended into the valley. The necropolis was about five miles long and half that across at its widest point. The road descended farther than was first apparent from above. Once they reached the floor of the gorge, the cliffs loomed several hundred feet above their heads, enclosing them in a cocoon of ruddy stone.
The caravan halted midway across the valley at a square platform beside the road. The square was made from a deep-red stone shot through with black veins. Lord Isiratu's wagon pulled up beside it while the guards spread out to make camp on the opposite side of the road. The sky turned deep lavender as the sun went down behind the canyon walls, and long shadows reached across the tombs, shrouding them in gloom. A cool breeze floated across the camp.
Lord Isiratu, his son, and Nasir emerged from the wagon. Usually when they stopped for the night, the lords retired directly to their tents to eat and bathe, but tonight they climbed onto the platform and knelt in the dust with their heads bowed. Braziers were produced and set alight at each corner. Then Nasir led the nobles in a slow chant. They repeated this ritual three times, each time turning to face a different direction. Food was brought forth and thrown into the braziers. Wine was poured onto the stone floor, making Horace lick his cracked lips. Yet even as he was haunted by his thirst, a strange feeling intruded on his thoughts. He felt warmth coming from the direction of the platform, though the braziers were more than a dozen yards away and the temperature on the valley floor was dropping. The warmth played along his skin like the touch of a furnace. Thinking it might be heat-sickness, he sat down.
After the libations for the dead, the ritual ended. By that time the tents had been erected, and the masters went inside. The guards came around with water and hard bread for the slaves.
Chains rattled as Jirom sat down beside him. “Want company?”
Horace nodded as he sipped from his cup. “Sure. I'd be glad for it.”
The other slaves were eating and lying down on the ground, trying to get what little sleep they could. Horace was exhausted, too, but sleep wasn't on his mind as he gazed upon the rows of tombs and mastabas dotting the landscape and tried to imagine what would compel a people to put so much labor into their final restin
g places. “This is beyond belief.”
Jirom grunted around the last bite of his supper. “The Akeshii bury their dead in stone mansions if they're rich enough, or in the dirt if not. They believe their souls pass down into the earth to the afterworld to be judged.”
Horace shook his head. His own faith taught that only the evil descended into Hell, while those who had been saved by the Prophet's grace rose to the glory of paradise. Yet he kept that to himself, not wanting to insult Jirom in case he shared the Akeshians’ beliefs. “Whatever the reason for these tombs, I never thought I'd see any place like this. It makes me feel small, like a child getting his first glimpse of the ocean. Except here, the drops of water are measured in years. Some of these temples must be centuries old.”
“Older than that. These high walls protect the tombs from the winds and weather. They'll still be sitting here when the world ends.”
“And here we sit before them, a couple of slaves on our way to discover our fates.”
Horace chuckled at the absurdity of his life. Jirom looked over and then laughed. A handful of guards glanced up but didn't bother to quiet them. Finally, Horace took a deep breath and let it out, feeling better. “So how does a man from the southern continent find himself here?”
“It's a long tale.”
Horace leaned back on his elbows and stretched out. “I'm a good listener.”
The big man looked up at the deepening sky. The first stars were out, twinkling like fireflies above the valley. The wind had picked up, strong enough to make the brazier flames flutter. “I was with a mercenary unit out of Maganu, one of the few sane outfits to come out of that Death-loving country. After putting down an uprising in Bylos, we were hired by an expatriated prince of Isuran to take back his city. The enemy was a rival prince with dreams of empire. The sacking took only two days, but that's when the real trouble began. An Akeshian legion showed up on the doorstep. What we didn't know was that our royal employer had received an Akeshian envoy the previous year, and had hung him from the city walls as a testament to his independence. The Akeshii had returned to answer the insult in blood.
“Our employer, of course, demanded our protection….”
As Horace listened to Jirom's tale of battle and deceit, he realized how little he knew about the world. He'd spent his entire life thinking Arnos was the center of civilization, but these past few days he had come to realize that his homeland was just a small piece of a vast puzzle connecting millions of lives. Had he not been shipwrecked, he would have never met this man sitting next to him. “So the Akeshians took the city?”
Jirom nodded as he finished his cup of water. “Aye. They had us outnumbered more than ten to one. At the end I killed our employer for betraying us, but most of my unit was dead by then. The conquerors gave me a choice: the collar or the stake. I chose to live.”
I chose to live.
The words echoed in Horace's mind. Would he have made the same choice? He couldn't say for sure.
“You and I are survivors,” Jirom said. “Alike in mind, I think.”
“I don't know about that. You're…well, you're the scariest man I ever met. I'm just a sailor.”
“No. I don't know much about you, but I already know you are more than that. You have a strong spirit.”
The big man held out his hand. Horace took it and squeezed firmly.
“Sleep well, Horace-of-Tines.”
“Good night, Jirom of the Zaral.”
Jirom lay down and closed his eyes, but Horace stayed awake for some time, watching the twilight turn to true night. He thought about what Jirom had said about them both being survivors. What was the point of surviving if everyone and everything you loved was taken from you? What awaited him in the future except more of the same, the empty loneliness that corroded his every waking thought and plagued his dreams with visions of the life he'd lost? If he had learned anything from the shipwreck, it was that he no longer feared death. In its place had emerged a new fear, of being alone in this world.
He reclined on the firm ground. Exhaustion from the long day dragged on his thoughts. As he closed his eyes, he said a silent prayer of thanks for another day, and for the new friend he had made.
Dark clouds gathered in the east, like ink smudges marring the horizon. Horace shaded his eyes as he studied the storm front and prayed it wasn't a mirage.
“It feels like we're marching into the ovens of Hell.”
The caravan had left the Valley of Souls before dawn, hastening up the canyon road and onto the desert plain as if in a rush to put the city of the dead behind it. Horace, for one, had been sorry to leave. The necropolis was peaceful and inspiring at the same time. Yet, as the sun pounded the caravan with its merciless rays, the misery drove away thoughts of the tranquil burial ground.
“I would suggest you pray,” Jirom said, beside him. “But even the gods aren't crazy enough to visit here.”
Horace smiled, but he couldn't summon the energy to laugh. He didn't know how much longer he could go on. With each passing mile, the urge to give up and lie down grew more powerful.
“Be strong,” Jirom said, as if he could sense these thoughts. “Focus on the ground in front of you and don't think about the individual steps.”
“You talk like you've done this before.”
“Many times. You have to march to find work when you're a mercenary.”
A warm breeze blew over the caravan as Jirom started a story about another desert he had crossed while soldiering. Horace studied the clouds ahead. At first, he thought it was a trick of the morning light, but now he noticed they were a strange, green hue. They grew darker and taller with the passing minutes, until Horace realized they were coming in this direction. Fast.
A cry went up from the front of the column. Horace couldn't pull his gaze away from the advancing storm. He'd spent most of his life on and around the water. He knew weather, but he'd never seen anything like this. Not since the night the Bantu Ray went down and he'd washed ashore here.
The soldiers hurried to surround the wagon. Some took spikes and hammers from their packs, and others retrieved coils of rope. Working quickly, they threw the ropes over the wagon and spiked both ends to the ground. The drivers rushed to cover the draft animals with tarpaulins.
The slaves dropped to the ground. Horace followed along, but he and Jirom stayed up on their knees to see while the others pressed their faces to the sand. The clouds were still approaching. Every few seconds an emerald glow would highlight their billowing masses. He heard the first thunder boom when the front was still a couple miles away. The strength of it reverberated in his chest. His hands started to shake.
Within minutes the sky was awash in roiling clouds. Sand flew in all directions as the storm smashed into the procession like a tidal wave. At the front of the caravan, the soldiers huddled around the wagon as if to protect its wooden sides with their bodies, but several of them scurried back as the wagon door opened. Lord Isiratu and Lord Ubar climbed down. Horace watched, shading his eyes with both hands, as the two noblemen walked out in front of the procession. Ubar looked nervous, grasping the folds of his long skirt as if forcing his legs to keep from bolting, but Lord Isiratu strode with confidence into the face of the storm.
The two noblemen stopped twenty yards ahead of the lead oxen. Horace's mouth fell open as Lord Isiratu raised his right hand toward the clouds. A tingling warmth suffused Horace's chest directly behind his breastbone. The sensation grew into a stabbing ache as it expanded throughout his body. At the same time, a powerful urge gnawed at the back of his mind, a yearning to lash out, to scream and rage and destroy.
What the Hell is happening to me?
Then a blast of wind slammed into him. Unprepared for its force, Horace tumbled backward in a cloud of stinging, choking sand. He tried to stop his momentum, but he couldn't find purchase in the loose ground. He yelled, knowing there was no one to help him. The urge to hurt something bled into his frustration and fear. Then the coffle chain yank
ed hard against his collar.
Fighting to keep from being strangled by his collar, Horace could hear chanting through the howling tumult. He managed to get to his knees, but he froze as a solid wall of sand rose from the desert floor. The wall grew into a semicircular rampart curving around Lord Isiratu and Ubar and the front of the procession. The wind abated for a moment, allowing Horace to catch his breath. Then the wall exploded, crumbling to the ground as if it had been kicked over by a malicious titan. The wind returned in a roaring rush. While his father staggered backward, Lord Ubar made clawing gestures with both hands. An inky fog billowed up from the ground around him, but the storm scattered the mist before it could accomplish anything.
Horace tried crawling back to the huddled slaves. The sand slipped away beneath him, and he felt himself sliding backward. Then a strong grip seized his wrist. Jirom pulled him back into the crowd of cowering slaves. Horace nodded in thanks. The big man smiled back.
Ahead of them, the wagon rocked from side to side and the oxen bellowed. Isiratu and Ubar stood firm against the storm's fury, their clothes fluttering in the wind. Horace gasped through his teeth as the pain in his chest returned. His vision darkened for a moment, and he felt like he was back onboard the Bantu Ray, battered by the wind and waves. He shook the memory away, but when his eyesight cleared, everything had changed. The storm clouds overhead had turned midnight black. Emerald bolts of light passed between them, almost too fast to see. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Horace felt the urge to reach up, as if he could touch the swelling clouds. He imagined the tickle of the lightning across his skin, the smell of ozone and moisture entering his lungs with every breath.
He didn't realize he had stood up until he felt the hand tugging his arm. Jirom kept a strong hold on him, but Horace shook his head. The impulse to move—to do something—compelled him. He pulled free and rose to his full height. He sensed some sort of connection to the storm, as if the energy flowing through him was reflected in the clouds above, or maybe it was the other way around. He reached up with his fingers spread.
