The Parched Sea

by Troy Denning

  Al’Aif laid a hand on the youth’s shoulder. “Consider it a gift from one warrior to another.”

  Kadumi smiled at the older man. “Thank you, Al’Aif. Some day, I shall repay you a dozenfold.”

  “When you are the sheikh of the reborn Qahtan, no doubt,” the scar-faced warrior said, giving Ruha a salacious glance. He turned to Lander. “Find someplace to hide until morning. The Zhentarim have sent spies to watch us, and they are lurking about in the sands. You will find it easier to find their trails and avoid their hiding places during the day.”

  The berrani nodded. “Sound advice.”

  “Go with the favor of Kozah, berrani,” Al’Aif said, turning back toward camp. “You shall need it.”

  “My thanks for our rescue.”

  “No need to thank me.” The scar-faced warrior did not look back. “If I had known you were doing so well on your own, I would not have bothered.”

  The trio descended into the wadi and inspected Kadumi’s animals. Their humps were firm from a day of good grazing, and their bellies were bloated with a fresh watering. The baggage camels were loaded with full waterskins, a khreima, and kuerabiches filled with dried fruits, meats, and extra clothes. There were even two scimitars, a pair of bows with two fulls quivers, and an extra jambiya.

  After he had finished his inspection, Lander said, “It appears Al’Aif is truly anxious to be rid of us. We have everything we need for a long journey.”

  “He is truly a generous man,” Ruha commented cynically. “But where are we going?”

  Taking the three heavy cloaks off a baggage camel, Lander said, “That depends upon what your tribe does and where the Zhentarim go, at least for me.”

  “Why?” Ruha asked. “What are the Zhentarim to you?”

  Draping a cloak over her shoulders, the berrani said, “The Zhentarim are evil, rapacious, and they intend to enslave the peoples of the desert. I have come to help the Bedine defeat them.”

  “How?” Kadumi asked. “If an entire tribe cannot defeat them, what can you do?”

  Lander regarded the boy with an even, honest expression. “I don’t know yet.”

  Kadumi shrugged. “Well, they are our enemies also. We may as well ride together—for a time, at least.”

  The youth began to untether the camels. Lander joined him, leaving Ruha to wonder what the stranger really wanted from the Bedine.

  Once they had checked the saddles and strung the baggage camels into a caravan line, Lander led the trio up the wadi. When the dry ravine ended, they dismounted and ascended onto the breezy shoulder of Rahalat.

  Ruha envied the grace with which the berrani led the way over the broken ground, for she found the going hard on the steep terrain—especially since, as a woman, it was her duty to lead the baggage string. Several times she almost turned an ankle, and once she lost her balance as they topped a twenty-foot cliff.

  As she crossed a rocky spine running between a pair of thirty-foot precipices, Ruha decided that it might be best for Kadumi to lead the baggage camels. Before she could speak, the hollow knell of a goat bell sounded behind her. Her first thought was that the animal making the sound belonged to the Zhentarim, for the Mtair Dhafir kept no goats. Bringing the incantation for a wind wall to mind, she spun around ready to cast the spell and push her enemies off the mountain.

  There was no one behind her. Without turning around, she asked, “Lander, Kadumi, did you hear anything?”

  “Yes, down there,” Lander replied.

  “No, over here,” Kadumi countered.

  Ruha turned and saw Lander peering off of one side of the spine and Kadumi off of the other. The bell sounded again, and this time she realized it came from inside her head.

  The widow’s companions realized the same thing. Kadumi blanched and covered his ears with his hands, while Lander simply shook his head, vainly trying to clear it.

  “Rahalat!” Kadumi gasped.

  The youth began tugging on his camel reins, trying to turn his gelding around and start down. When the confused beast looked over the precipices to either side of it, it would not move. Lander grasped the boy’s shoulder. “What’s Rahalat?”

  “The mountain spirit,” Ruha explained.

  “She does not want us here,” Kadumi added, still trying to turn his camels around.

  “A ghost?” inquired Lander.

  Ruha shook her head. “A goddess.”

  “Rahalat was a shunned woman,” Kadumi explained. “Her khowwan abandoned her here, and she claimed the oasis as her home. She was very bitter and used her magic to prevent any tribe from grazing here.”

  The bells sounded again, but this time they seemed to come from all sides. Kadumi dropped the camel reins and started down the mountain, abandoning the confused beasts.

  “During a drought, the Dakawa murdered her,” Ruha continued, not attempting to stop her brother-in-law. “According to legend, the spring turned to blood. For the next ten years, anything that drank from it perished. Now, every tribe that camps at Rahalat must sacrifice a camel to the mountain goddess or the water goes bad.”

  Looking after Kadumi, Lander said, “We can’t go back. When the sheikh hears we’re missing, he’ll search everywhere for us.”

  A terrible clatter sounded from above, and the air filled with the bleating of goats. A moment later, a herd of several dozen of the beasts materialized from the boulders on the slope above the rocky spine, then started moving down the mountain. The camels began backing away nervously, their footing coming precariously close to the cliffs to either side.

  Kadumi called, “Come with me, you fools, or you will be driven off the cliffs with my camels!”

  “We can’t abandon the camels,” Lander said to Ruha. “Without them, we’re dead.”

  “And if we stay, we are also dead,” Ruha answered, watching Kadumi descend the mountain. The widow did not blame him for leaving.

  Lander was not intimidated, though. He started toward the goats, waving his arms and crying, “Go back to where you came from! Get out of here!”

  Kadumi’s brown gelding tried to turn and flee, then slipped and lost its footing. With a terrified bellow, it plunged off the cliff on the backside of the mountain, its body bouncing off the rocks with a series of muffled thuds.

  Ruha realized that, whether or not he was a fool to challenge Rahalat, Lander was right about one thing: they could not afford to lose their camels. She waved her hand at the top of the rocky spine, at the same time whispering the incantation she had brought to mind earlier.

  The breeze shifted, then whistled as it wove itself into an impenetrable wall in the spot she had chosen. The goats stumbled into the invisible barrier, then began to batter it with their horns or try to climb over.

  Lander turned and stared at Ruha with an astonished expression. “Did you do that?”

  “No,” she said, speaking the lie automatically. It did not even cross her mind that Lander might not be offended by her use of magic. Ruha handed the reins to the baggage camel to the confused berrani. “Hold these. I’ll go to the back of the line and see if I can coax them down backward.”

  As she worked her way past the apprehensive camels, the bleating of the goats and the knelling of their bells faded.

  “Wait!” Lander called. “They’re gone!”

  Ruha turned around and saw that he was correct. The goats had disappeared, as had her wind wall. In their place stood the white, translucent figure of an unveiled woman. Her face was young and strong-featured, though there was a certain weariness to her countenance that gave her a lonely and heartbroken appearance. She was studying Ruha with an expression of sisterly sorrow.

  “Kadumi! Come back! They’re gone,” called Lander. Without waiting to see if the youth heard him, the berrani turned and started back up the mountain. “We’d better get off this narrow ridge before something else happens.”

  “Wait,” Ruha said, still looking past him to the translucent form of the goddess. “How do you know Rahalat has give
n us her permission?”

  Lander looked directly at the place where the form of the goddess was standing. “There’s nothing there,” he said. “Just a moonlit rock.”

  Rahalat gave Ruha a sly smile, then suddenly looked in the direction of the Bitter Well. She scowled in displeasure, and then the goddess was gone.

  Ruha led her camels across the rest of the spine, puzzling over the appearance of the goddess and the meaning of her final frown. From Lander’s reaction, it was apparent that Rahalat had permitted only the widow to see her, and from that Ruha deduced that she was being shown some sort of special favor. She could not decide, however, whether the glance in the Bitter Well’s direction had been a warning of some sort or whether the goddess had merely seen something in that direction that she did not like.

  When Ruha reached Lander’s side, he asked, “You didn’t make that wall of force that saved us?”

  “What’s a wall of force?” Ruha asked, turning to look down the mountain. “Is Kadumi coming?”

  The question was unnecessary, for the youth was already crossing the rock spine. He paused in the center long enough to cast a regretful glance down at his dead gelding. Then, a sheepish expression on his face, he rejoined them without saying anything.

  Lander resumed his climb, finally calling a halt atop a section of steep crags and two-thousand foot cliffs that overlooked the oasis spring. Ruha could see the embers of the Mtairi campfires spread out in a semi-circle against the base of the mountain. In the darkness, she could not see individual silhouettes moving about the camp, but there was no sign of torches, so she assumed the trio’s escape remained unnoticed.

  Beyond the camp, the alabaster crests of the whaleback dunes and ebony ribbons of their dark troughs created an eerie sea of black and white that stretched clear to the eastern horizon. Somewhere to the northeast, Ruha knew, was the Bitter Well and the Zhentarim army.

  “I thought we had walked farther,” Kadumi commented.

  “We did,” Lander answered. “The only way to get here is around the back of the mountain. If anyone comes after us, we’ll see them leave camp long before they reach us.”

  “Still,” Ruha said, “it would be best not to let them see our silhouettes on this ridge.”

  The berrani nodded, then led the way a few paces down the other side of the shoulder. As Lander and Kadumi tethered the camels, Ruha heard the faint tones of an amarat horn. Her first thought was that their absence had been discovered, and she quickly scrambled back up the shoulder.

  A moment later, Ruha knew she was wrong. She crested the ridge in time to see a bolt of light flash in the dunes outside the oasis, then a muffled peal of thunder rumbled up the mountainside. More amarat horns sounded.

  “Zhentarim!” she gasped.

  By the time Kadumi and Lander joined her, flickering pinpoints of torchlight were dancing between the khreimas. A solid line of the torches was forming at the edge of the camp.

  “It appears Al’Aif got his wish after all,” Lander commented. “The Zhentarim must know that Zarud was killed.”

  “How could they know so soon?” Kadumi asked. “That was only a few hours ago.”

  “Magic or spies,” Ruha suggested. “Do they always attack so quickly after an insult?”

  “The Zhentarim are careful planners,” Lander said, his eyes fixed on the scene below. “As soon as Zarud presented their treaty, they probably started moving their army forward—just in case the sheikh did not accept their terms.”

  A familiar knot of cold dread formed in Ruha’s stomach. “The Mtair will be slaughtered, just like the Qahtan.”

  Neither of her companions contradicted her.

  Seven

  “Where are the dead?”

  The question was Kadumi’s, but it troubled Lander and Ruha as well. The trio was perched on Rahalat’s shoulder, at the top of a steep face of barren rock that dropped over two thousand feet to the campsite at the base of the mountain. The sun was just rising, and they were getting their first view of the devastated khowwan of the Mtair Dhafir.

  From such a distance, the three survivors could make out only a few details of the scene below. Every khreima in the camp had been knocked down. The Zhentarim had tethered the Mtair’s camels in a tight circle and were looting the possessions of the Mtair Dhafir. Hundreds of columns of gray smoke rose from campfires spread around the base of the mountain, and the camel drivers were taking their beasts to drink from the spring in small groups.

  Missing from the scene were what Lander had most expected to see: the bodies of the Mtair Dhafir. At such a distance, it was impossible to tell a tribesman from an invader, for men looked like dark specks crawling across the pale sands. What troubled Lander and his companions was that all the dark specks were moving. If the Bedine were lying at the base of the mountain, at least two hundred of the dark specks would have been quite still.

  “Perhaps the Mtair escaped,” Kadumi whispered. “It was dark, and we could not see what was truly happening.”

  The trio had spent the night watching the battle, but they had not seen much. After the amarats had sounded a second time, the torches on the battleline went out, presumably extinguished by the warriors themselves in order to keep from drawing attention to their positions. A few minutes had passed, then muted cries had begun to drift up the mountainside.

  In camp, the women, marked by the flickering lights of their torches, had scurried about, collecting children and supplies with renewed frenzy. As the Mtairi battle cries grew more desperate, the women had assembled on the far side of the camp, then fled the battlefield.

  Before the line of yellow flames had traveled fifty yards, a muffled chorus of surprised screams had heralded an invader ambush. The refugees had scattered, but their torches had started to wink out immediately.

  Recalling the agonized shriek that had accompanied each dying light, Lander knew that even if some of the women had escaped, there were many more who had not. The sand should have been carpeted with their bodies and with the bodies of the warriors who had died at the battleline.

  Lander shook his head. “Everybody couldn’t have escaped, Kadumi.” The Sembian did not bother to speak in a hushed voice. With the Zhentarim nearly a half-mile away, there was no chance of being overheard. “There should be dozens of corpses at the very least. Do you see any?”

  “No corpses,” Ruha answered. She pointed at a knot of dark specks gathered at the tent in which the trio had been held last night. “But I don’t like what is happening there.”

  As she spoke, the gathering began to break into groups of ten or twelve. As each group left, it moved in a different direction.

  “Search parties!” Lander said.

  Kadumi’s brow furrowed. “Are they searching for—”

  “Me,” Lander said, assuming that his enemies learned of his presence from a captured Mtair. “Perhaps we should separate. If they find me, the Zhentarim might stop looking.”

  Ruha regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. Her dark eyes flashed with what Lander took to be irritation, then she said, “Either you have a very low opinion of Kadumi and I, or an exaggerated sense of your own importance, berrani.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Lander protested, feeling himself flush in embarrassment. “But if the Zhentarim know I am here, they won’t stop searching until they find me.”

  “Why is that?” asked Kadumi suspiciously.

  Lander considered the boy’s question for a moment, then decided that he should reveal his identity to his companions so that they might understand the danger into which they were moving. He opened his robe and displayed the pin that he wore over his heart. “I belong to an organization called the Harpers,” he said. “We work to protect the freedom of people everywhere, and that often places us into opposition against the Zhentarim.”

  “As in this case?” Ruha asked.

  “Yes,” the Harper answered. “If they catch you with me, it will mean a slow and agonizing death.”

  “If
they catch us without you, it will mean a slow and agonizing death,” Ruha countered. “The Zhentarim whom Al’Aif killed had a companion. That man knows that Kadumi and I came here to warn my father about the Black Robes, and he may even suspect that we had something to do with the murder. So we lose nothing by staying together, unless you feel you would be safer without a boy and a woman to defend. Of course, I don’t know how long a berrani can expect to survive in Anauroch with no guides …”

  The irony in Ruha’s tone did not escape Lander. He raised his hand to quiet her. “Your point is well taken,” he said. “Together, we all stand a better chance of surviving.”

  When Ruha nodded, the Sembian started to crawl back down the ridge toward the camels.

  The widow caught his arm before he gone two steps. “Where are you going?”

  “We’d better leave,” he said. “If the Zhentarim find us up here, we’ll be trapped.”

  Ruha shook her head. “Rahalat will not allow the Zhentarim on her slopes.”

  “How can you be sure?” Lander asked. The phantom goats had convinced him of Rahalat’s existence, though he suspected she was a ghost and not a goddess. In either case, he saw no reason to believe she would protect them.

  Ruha glanced toward the mountain’s summit. “If Rahalat did not favor us, we would be dead. I doubt that she will favor the Zhentarim.”

  Lander glanced at Kadumi. “What do you think?”

  The youth looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. “What my sister-in-law says makes sense,” he said. “Besides, we would only draw attention to ourselves by moving. We should wait.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he said, crouching behind the ridge crest. “If I know the Zhentarim, they won’t stop searching until they’ve scoured every inch of the oasis. Let’s take care not to let them see us up here.”

  Lander motioned for the other two to conceal themselves in the rocks, and they did as asked. Their hiding places overlooked not only the camp, but the approach up the ridge as well. Even if Rahalat did not keep the Zhentarim off the mountain, the Sembian felt confident that they would see the enemy in plenty of time to flee.