by Carol Berg
By first light I had gotten a little more sleep, and, after a chunk of carroc and another cup of stinking nazrheel—somehow always available in a Derzhi camp no matter how sparse the circumstances—I was feeling well enough to ride with Malver to the sink. To be surrounded by an eternity of sand and gravel—wasil, the Derzhi called this particular kind of desolation—and then to ride over a slight rise to see a small basin filled with lush green was astonishing. The silence of the wasteland was broken by a thousand chittering birds—pipits and grass birds and yellow-tailed finches—and the heady smell of moisture soon had me intoxicated. The grass was cropped close—goats had been here within a seven-day-the trees were sparse, a few thorny acacias among the thick-boled date palms, scrawny doums, and stunted prickly juniper, yet the grassy basin was as beautiful as anything I’d seen in weeks.
Malver filled the waterskins and said he would work on trapping some dinner, while I walked down among the trees and set about the task of cutting splints. My old friend Garen had always been good at shaping wood without tools, and I tried to remember how he’d done it. Something with rope, I thought, and I sat on the cool grass for a time, idly fingering a loop of rope from Malver’s saddle and staring at the tree.
So many years gone ... Garen was a miller’s son who had gone into the world as a Searcher, one who sought out possessed souls for us to heal. When his father had died, Garen had come home to see to the mill, only to have the Derzhi invade Ezzaria two days after his return. III luck, indeed. But he had survived it, escaped into exile with the Queen and a few others, and gone home again sixteen years later when I brought them Aleksander’s gift—the return of our homeland.
Garen was still living in Ezzaria, along with my wife, Ysanne, who had tried to execute me, my friend Catrin, the intelligent young woman who had taken her grandfather’s place as a Wardens’ mentor, and so many others. How did they fare? Were the demon Gastai still hunting, requiring Ezzarian warding? I didn’t know. I had opened the way to Kir‘Navarrin, but I had no idea how the rai-kirah fared, either—whether their presence in that ancient realm had eased their cravings for physical life or whether my efforts to put things right for them had been for naught. But on that sweet morning, with the sun still teasing the sky with pink, my thoughts refused to stray from Ezzaria, my own true home. I had tried to shut them out of my mind—my beautiful, rainswept forestland and my stubborn, honorable, blind people who would slay me if I stepped beneath its oaks again. What was it about this green island in the desert that caused such an assault of homesickness that I could scarcely contain it?
I snapped the loop of rope about my hands, forcing my thoughts back to the present dilemma. Fire. Garen had wrapped rope about a tree and made it burn without consuming the rope, and then tightened the noose and burned it again, slowly cutting its way through the tree. That was a start.
By the time Malver came and found me, the sun was high and murderously hot. He had a brace of sand grouse hanging around his neck, and I was drenched in sweat and staring down at a stack of rough, splintery shards of nagera wood. “Earth’s bones!” he said, blinking. Then he raked me up and down with his hooded eyes, astonishment getting the better of his shyness. “Never thought the gods’ magic would be all that much work. How, in the name of all things, did they ever get the world put together?”
I started laughing then, and picked up several of my ungrace ful shapings and shoved them into his arms. “I’ve been trying to find the answer to that question forever, Malver. But I keep getting farther away from it.”
I was appalled when Malver removed the blood-soaked wrappings on Aleksander’s leg to examine it before we set the splints. Swollen, grotesquely purple, the jagged rent just below his knee, where bone had punctured flesh, still slowly seeping blood, the limb resembled nothing human. Oh, my Prince, I thought. What have we done keeping you alive? It was the first time I’d had doubts about what I’d done. I did not see how it could be possible to save such a leg, and the thought of Aleksander maimed, hobbling on a crutch as Gordain had done, unable to ride his beloved horses ... He would fall upon his sword first. And the pain of it ... No wonder his face was the color of old linen.
“We’re going to have to shift it, my lord,” said Sovari grimly. “Splint it better so we can move you.”
“Get on with it,” whispered the Prince through clenched teeth.
Sovari handed me the Prince’s knife sheath. It already had teeth marks in it. When I offered it to Aleksander, he closed his eyes and jerked his head, and I slipped it between his jaws. I knelt behind his head and placed my hands on his shoulders, nodding to Sovari. “Listen to me, my lord,” I said as the two warriors began to strap the new splints about his leg, and I had to press down upon his shoulders to keep him from rising up off the sand in his agony. “Remember how we did this when you became a shengar. How you held onto my voice and took yourself out of your body, letting it transform as it would. Do that now. Take hold of me and let me draw you away. I’ve experience of my own with this recently. Blaise has been my guardian spirit as you said I was for you ...”
Sovari and Malver were as gentle as they could be in binding his limb into its cage of wood, but the business took a great deal of time. For that endless hour I told the Prince of my madness and my fear of Denas and Kir‘Navarrin, not for self-indulgence, not thinking he might help or believing it was anything he needed to be worried about. Indeed I would far rather have kept it to myself. But I knew that every other subject of importance to him would lead us back to his father and his battle and his failure and his wounding, and he needed to be thinking of something else. Likely he would not even remember what I said.
By the end, Aleksander was gray and near collapse. I pulled the knife sheath from his mouth. He had almost bitten through it. As I blotted his face and dribbled water on his lips, he kept his eyes closed and took shallow, trembling breaths.
We needed to determine where we were, to consider our position and resources, to plan what to do next, but all of us were weary beyond telling and the cruel sun sapped our strength as a smith’s fire softens steel. We squeezed into what scraps of shade we could contrive with haffai and swords and slept away the noonday.
Flying ... over green hills sculpted by the steeply angled light, past meandering rivers of glinting bronze, above stands of trees, their rich green edged with gold... golden, glorious light ... a promise of the fiery magnificence hiding just below the western horizon. Why did I fly away from the light? What beauty lay in the shadowed east that I hurtled so desperately toward it? But of course it was not beauty that drew me... the wood, yes, the twining, yellow trunks of the gamarands, the loveliest of all woodland trees ... that was beauty, but beyond it ... Even as I flew inerrant, my eyes wanted to turn away. Yet even if I were to shut them tightly, seal them with enchantments so they could not look beyond the gamarand wood, blind them to all seeing forever... even then I would see. The smoldering edges of the woodland. Knee-deep ashes and skeletal trees. The bleak, forbidding wall, its leaking blood stanched only for the moment. With the next breach, the fortress on the mountainside would spew forth blood again, a river that would set fire to all it touched. The woodland would burn first, and then the hills and rivers and all the worlds beyond its holy boundaries. On I flew ... past the graceful walls of gray stone... past gardens and courtyards filled with flowers and fountains... past crystalline windows, for the fortress was as beautiful as it was dreadful ... and onward to the shadowed ramparts where the prisoner waited, wings unfurled, ready to wreak havoc on the world... “Don’t turn around, ” I begged as I touched my feet to the stone. “Don’t turn ... I don’t want to see...” But as ever, he turned, and, as ever, he wore my face ...
The flat, silver desert sunset was fading when I woke drenched in sweat. I swiftly buried the dread raised by my dream. Though fear owned my sleep, I would not allow it to rule my waking life. I would find another path. I had to.
Malver sat plucking his birds, readying them for a smoky
tarbush fire. From where I lay stretched out on the warm sand, I whispered an enchantment that soon had the coals brighter without consuming his meager fuel any faster. After a few minutes he blinked and examined his little conflagration, and then cast his eyes about him uncertainly. I couldn’t hear what he was muttering as he spitted the birds on a long dagger, shaking his head all the while. I smiled to myself. I hated raw fowl.
I rolled over to sitting, yawned, and stretched out my shoulders. Malver ducked his head awkwardly in my direction as he poked his birds at the fire, trying not to stare at me. No doubt he was wondering if I would sprout wings again any time soon. I rose and checked on Aleksander. The Prince was moaning softly in his sleep, his skin hot and dry. I couldn’t tell if he was feverish or just overheated from the lingering day.
“I gave him some water and carroc, but he never came awake for it,” said Malver. “Captain Sovari’s gone to fetch more water. He thought we’d best be traveling tonight to find shelter, unless ... unless you were to have another plan.”
“Tell me what we’d find eight leagues from Zhagad, Malver,” I said as I returned to the fire, cut off a piece of carroc, and sucked on it. “In every direction.” The Azhaki desert was not a hospitable place for lost travelers. Indeed we needed to find shelter—not only from the elements, but from the Hamraschi and the Emperor they were going to make. I could not imagine where Aleksander might be safe.
“Me and the captain talked of it a bit. We’re likely not north of Zhagad. From the city north along the road to Capharna and westerly, we’d see naught but wasil most anywhere until we were far enough to get into grasslands and the river country. On the other side of the road, where it branches easterly toward Avenkhar, we’d be set in the middle of Srif Polnar; but Srif Polnar’s not so wide as what we see from here. And anyways, I don’t think we could have gone through Zhagad in the storm ...” He glanced up at me as if to ask whether I’d done some sorcery to make such a thing possible.
“No. Not likely.”
Malver set a stone in the sand to represent Zhagad, and then, with his finger, drew a ring around it to represent the distance we had traveled from the Hamrasch fortress. As he spoke of towns and roads and desert features, he marked each one on his diagram. “Straight south is the Manganar road out of Zhagad. At eight leagues you’d look west to Srif Balat, the widest stretch of dunes in Azhakstan. A bit more west and you’d find the Merat Salé—the Sea of Salt. There’s some high country around there—two big Fontezhi fortresses guarding the salt—and some stretches of wasil. We could be somewhere here or here.” He sounded dubious as he stuck his finger in the sand. “Wouldn’t want to ride into Fontezhi holdings just now. They’re intermarried with the Hamraschi. Farther west is more high country looking out over Srif Naj, some of Prince Aleksander’s lands, but this doesn’t feel right for being Srif Naj. I’ve been that way often enough, and the captain more, and he doesn’t think it so.”
The Hamraschi would be watching all of Aleksander’s holdings, I guessed. No sanctuary there. With Kiril’s surrender terms binding what loyalists might remain from the Zhagad garrison and with the bulk of Aleksander’s personal troops still straggling in from Suzain, the Prince would have no one to protect him. “What if we’re east of the Manganar road?”
“Eight leagues out and nearby the road, we’d be in heged lands: the Ramiell—Lord Kiril’s hold—the Fozhet, and such like smaller houses.” Every heged had its traditional holdings in the desert, as well as its more productive fiefdoms in the fertile conquered lands. “Beyond those, more easterly yet, we’d be in Srif Anar, a treacherous land, haunted some say”—Malver’s glance flicked to my face and back to his drawing very quickly—“as that’s where Drafa lies.” Drafa was the ruin of an ancient city, born and dead long before the Empire grew out of the heart of desert Azhakstan. “Straight east from Zhagad and you’re on the trade routes to the eastern provinces ...” He continued to move his finger about his circle, telling me of towns and villages, roads, wasils and srifs, the empty dune seas where there was too little life to share with the desert.
I thanked him for his lesson and even more for the roasted birds; the few mouthfuls that were my share were exquisite. The men were right; we couldn’t stay where we were. No matter where along the ring we sat, the fertile sink would attract herdsmen and travelers who would carry news of anyone camped nearby. I had cut two long poles extra from the trees. We would need to craft a litter and carry Aleksander, a frighteningly slow way to travel.
Once Sovari was back with the horses and full waterskins, I told the men I was going to scout a bit and then we would get moving. They looked curious, but didn’t question how I might do such a thing in the growing darkness, merely said they would try to get the Prince to eat and drink to give him strength for the journey.
I walked into the night toward the sink, just far enough to be out of view. Then, sitting with my back against a rock still pulsing with warmth, I set myself to transform into a night bird’s shape so I could survey the land from above. But I had not even begun the transformation when a movement from the darkness caught my eye. I flattened myself to the sand beside the rock, expecting to see a dune-runner, perhaps, or a gazelle or a sand-deer startled from the sink by the scent of men upon the wind or nervous at the lurking presence of a kayeet. But the form that walked out of the darkness was tall and slender, and, if the starlight had burned brighter, her gown would have shown bright green.
I rose and waited for her to come, listening for the words she had been trying to tell me for so many days. My skin prickled. Who was she who could melt in and out of crowds and palaces, who had been able to recognize me in my falcon’s form, who could appear in the desert night with no obvious transport? Her beauty was not the ethereal perfection of Vallyne, the rai-kirah who had tried to steal my soul in Kir‘Vagonoth, nor was it the cool and dusky elegance of my wife, Ysanne. Rather this woman put me more in mind of Elinor—her loveliness more in bearing and spirit than in fine features. She stopped a few paces from me, and after studying me from head to toe, she smiled with a radiance that warmed the night.
“A comely form, my darling.” Her soft voice caressed my soul like the sweet winds of Ezzaria. “Strength and grace as ever were your raiment.” A step closer and her hand brushed the scar on my left cheek. “And this ... ah, dear friend ... but one mark of so many sorrows.”
I dropped my eyes and sank to my knees, unable to view such a depth of grieving as I glimpsed in her luminous countenance. “Lady, what is it you want of me?” Tears welled in my eyes. Longing ... devotion ... old, old sorrow ... though I could not explain any of it.
“You must remember, my darling. He reaches for you, thinking you’ve forgotten.”
The braying of a chastou ripped through the quiet night at my back, the noisy desert beast drowning the woman’s soft words, breaking the spell she had laid upon me. I leaped to my feet, my sword drawn ready to protect her, and I was nearly blinded by flaring torchlight.
“There you are!” called an elderly voice. “I knew we’d find you beside the spring. What did I tell you, boy?” Some twenty paces away, an old man clutched the arm of a slender boy of twelve or thirteen. The old man’s hair was perfectly white, twisted into two braids that reached below his waist, one on each side of his head. He was unmistakably Derzhi. Though sun exposure had withered his face into myriad tiny wrinkles, age had neither stooped nor shrunk his long bones nor made flaccid the arms revealed by his sleeveless tunic. His nose was long and slightly arched, and from his ears dangled hooped earrings of gold. His eyes flashed amber in the torchlight, though it was apparent from their aimless wandering that they saw nothing of the world. He carried no stick, as blind men usually do, but only held the boy’s arm.
“He’s not beside the spring, Gaspar,” said the boy quietly, leaning toward the old man as if to keep his correction private between the two of them. “It’s still five hundred paces away.” The boy was slim and wiry, every movement quick and graceful.
He had long light hair, unbraided, and was mostly naked, wearing only a loincloth, silver arm rings, and silver hoops in his ears. Neither boy nor man wore shoes.
The old man snorted. “Boys! Who can teach them? I say that out of all the Srif Anar we will find them at Taíne Het, and Qeb quibbles about five hundred paces.” Somewhere behind them the chastou bawled its displeasure.
My head was still filled with cobwebs of green enchantment, loving words that flitted through the night like fireflies, dark eyes filled with a world’s sorrows. I could scarcely comprehend the odd newcomers and their noise and bright light. “Lady,” I said, turning back to confirm her safety ... but she was vanished again, and I wanted to cry out the loss.
“We had no intent to interrupt your prayers, sir,” said the boy in great solemnity. “Gaspar was in a great hurry, believing your injured companion to be in grave danger.”
“Prayers ... no,” I said limply. Madness, more likely. They had not seen her. I shivered. “I just ... who are you, and who is it you’re looking for?”
“You and your fellow,” said the old man. “The one of darkness and the one of light. We’ve come to take you to Drafa to prepare you for the last battle.”
CHAPTER 8
Drafa. Had the gods ever contrived so unlikely a haven? So per ishingly hot and dismal a scar on the majestic desert? A holy city, Gaspar said, once beloved of the gods who were old before Athos went to live among the stars, the gods who had built the world from sand and water and fire.
