Sands of Memory

by Melissa McShane

  “I was thinking more of your ability to figure out how a trap works, even if it’s part artifact,” Sienne said. “These can’t be that difficult to use, and I doubt you have to be a wizard to use them. We just have to figure out the…the command words, or whatever it is. Maybe you steer with your legs, like a horse.”

  “I have just imagined Sienne atop one of these wearing riding boots and wielding a crop,” Perrin murmured.

  “You’re not funny. Come on, time is slipping away from us. Half an hour, and if we can’t make it work, I’ll ferry you to Chirantan without argument.”

  “That, I don’t believe,” Alaric said.

  “Of course I will!”

  “I meant the no argument part.” Alaric sighed and took hold of the nearest rug, brightly patterned in an eye-watering green and pink. “They’re not heavy, just bulky and hard to maneuver.”

  They steered the carpet out of the storage room and down the hall to the grand pillared entry chamber at the base of the throne room. Alaric had insisted that if they were going to experiment with an unknown form of transportation, it should be in an enclosed space where it couldn’t take off for the horizon with one of them aboard. It took some doing to get the thing horizontal, and more work to pull it down to waist height, but eventually the rug floated there as placidly as a brightly colored cow. Sienne went to climb atop it, but was restrained by Alaric. “If it crashes, we can’t afford for you to be hurt,” he said. “You’re the backup plan.”

  Dianthe put her hands on the rug and pulled herself up. It dipped a little, not enough to throw her off balance, and she was able to stand and even take a few steps on its smooth surface. “Hmm,” she said, going to her knees and examining the edges. “It’s got a couple of irregular spots on this edge. Darker than the rest.” She rested her palms on the rug’s surface and curled her fingers around its tasseled shorter edge.

  The rug shivered. Then it…Sienne could only think of it as coming to attention, if an inanimate object could do such a thing. But it wasn’t exactly inanimate, was it? In any case, it had a look about it that, if it had been a dog, Sienne would have called alert helpfulness.

  Then it moved. Slowly, and at no more than crawling speed, but it definitely moved. Dianthe’s face was set with concentration. “Are you doing that?” Alaric asked, keeping pace with her.

  “Yes. Shut up, mountain, this is harder than it looks.” The rug turned in a slow curve to the left, away from Alaric and the others, then curved in the opposite direction. Sienne held her breath as the rug proceeded to rise, still moving slowly, until it was close enough to the ceiling that Dianthe could touch it if she dared move her hands.

  Then she did move her hands, sitting up and waving to them. Sienne let out a shriek. But the rug didn’t plummet to the ground, just hovered where Dianthe had stopped it. “Just one more thing to try,” Dianthe shouted, and dropped back to lie on the carpet. It curved, losing height rapidly and going faster and faster until it sped past, forcing them to dodge and, in Perrin’s case, flatten himself on the floor as it passed over him. Sienne heard Dianthe laugh like a madwoman as she flew past.

  “Kitane’s left arm, but that was fun,” Dianthe said, making the rug wheel about and return to its starting position. “It corners like a pig in wallow, but I bet it can go faster than that. A lot faster.”

  “So how does it work?” Alaric said.

  “You’ll have to try it yourself to understand. When I put my hands on those marks, it was like making a connection with the power that moves the rug. Like harnessing a horse to a wagon. And then it did whatever I willed it to do. The hard part was staying focused and not getting distracted by things like how high I was in the air.” Dianthe hopped off and gestured to Alaric to take a turn. He looked at her skeptically, then at the rug, but climbed on less gracefully than she had and put his hands where she directed him.

  Sienne half expected the rug to lift more slowly under the Sassaven’s weight, but it floated even more swiftly to the ceiling than it had for Dianthe, spun around, and dove at an astonishing speed. Alaric sat up and said, “We need these. Everyone take one.”

  “Kalanath has to be a passenger,” Sienne said. “But they look big enough to carry two people.”

  “He can ride with me,” Vaishant said. “It will be no trouble.”

  “Let’s make sure it’s possible before we do that,” Alaric said.

  Vaishant, with Kalanath lying prone beside him, took the garish rug for a swing around the room. Now it moved more slowly, but Sienne thought Vaishant was being especially careful. When he came back down to floor level, Kalanath sat up and said, “That feels strange when I cannot see. I will be happier when I touch the ground again.”

  “The question is, can they go fast enough?” Sienne asked. “All our camping gear was on the horses, and they carried it away with them. If this takes longer than a day…”

  Dianthe smiled. “Wait until you try it yourself,” she said. “I could feel how fast I was capable of going, the way you know how fast you can run. And I didn’t come close to its top speed. I think those things can really move.”

  “Then let’s put that to the test,” Alaric said.

  It was easier to shepherd the rugs along when they were vertical, so they didn’t bother turning them, just hauled rug after rug out of the storage room until there were six of them lined up in the hallway like heavy curtains. Sienne’s was deep red and royal purple, a combination she liked better than Dianthe’s pink and green rug. She gently guided it through the halls and around to the front doors. Outside, she found that if she gripped it by the short side near the markings, it swung down into a horizontal position without any trouble and hovered just below waist height.

  She got one knee on its flat surface and pulled herself up. It dipped slightly, but otherwise remained steady. Its fibers were smooth and soft, making a pattern like a rose garden bordered by geometric shapes. She liked the contrast between the hard edges and the soft curves. She swept a palm across the roses briefly, then crawled forward—she wasn’t all that confident about standing on the thing—to look at the dark patches on the forward edge. With only a slight hesitation, she rested her palms against the marks and curled her fingers over the edge of the rug.

  Something tickled the edge of her mind, like the rising sun just peeping over the horizon, or a friend seen out of the corner of her eye. She relaxed and welcomed it, reasoning that it hadn’t hurt anyone else and she was more likely to find success if she didn’t fight. Gradually she became aware of the carpet as an extension of her, spread wide to catch the air, and discovered she’d started drifting forward without consciously intending to. She focused, and…it felt like flexing a muscle, though not one she’d ever had before, and the carpet stopped.

  She looked up. They’d reached the front gate without her realizing it. Her friends were all drifting along near her, bobbing at varying heights. They were also all looking at her. “What?” she said, feeling unexpectedly nervous.

  “You’re the one who can sense true north,” Alaric said. “You have to lead.”

  “Oh. That makes sense.” She worked her small magic and oriented the rug so she was pointed southeast. “I hope I don’t get us lost.”

  “It is a straight line southeast from here to Chirantan,” Vaishant said. Kalanath, lying beside him with his staff held flat by his side, had his unsettling eyes closed and his cheek pressed against the carpet. “You cannot be too far off if you stay on the line.”

  “Then…let’s go,” Sienne said, crouching lower. She gripped the carpet firmly and imagined herself moving faster.

  The rug moved forward at a slightly better than walking speed, staying level regardless of the irregularity of the sandy ground. “Faster,” Alaric called, and Sienne obliged. Soon, they were traveling as fast as she could run, then as fast as Kalanath could run, then they’d outpaced a theoretical Spark and still Sienne knew the carpet had more speed in it.

  Her eyes burned as the air blew agai
nst them, drying them out. She lowered her head and closed her eyes before realizing this was a bad idea at the speed they were going. She turned her thoughts inward, reaching for her sense of the thing that was the carpet. It wasn’t alive in any conventional sense, but it still radiated that sense of alertness she’d observed when Dianthe took her first ride. What do I do? she thought, picturing herself sandblasted by the desert air.

  The carpet’s attention came to rest on her. She felt herself being observed from head to toe, analyzed the way a tailor might inspect someone who came to her for a fitting. The air in front of Sienne’s face shimmered, becoming clearer as if it were a lens she could view the desert through. A rainbow sheen passed over it. Then, with a snap, the shimmering spread from side to side.

  The wind blowing sand into her face cut off instantly. Sienne blinked. It was like a sheet of glass had sprung up before her, but one that wasn’t harmed by the blowing sand. She drew in a breath that smelled of heat and sand, squirmed until she lay flat on the carpet with only her head and shoulders raised, and thought Let’s see what you can do.

  The carpet took off, jerking her head back unexpectedly. It accelerated until she was flying faster than a horse could run, faster than a bird could fly. Without the invisible glass, sand would have scoured her skin from her skull. She didn’t dare look behind her to see if her friends were keeping pace, just hoped they’d figured out the trick. Nothing in the world had ever gone as fast as she was moving now. She laughed with delight and willed it faster, and the carpet responded as if it, too, loved skimming along the tops of the dunes faster than thought.

  Minutes passed, turned into hours. Sienne’s neck and upper back ached from the position she lay in, propped on her elbows with her head raised to watch for obstacles. She didn’t like to think what might happen if she ran into something at this speed. Every so often she checked her inner sense and adjusted her course if necessary. Southeast in a straight line. She hoped Vaishant was right, and it wasn’t actually south-southeast or something like that, something that on horse you could easily correct for, but on a flying carpet would make you overshoot your mark and end up over the ocean. Could the carpets fly over water? She didn’t want to find out.

  More time passed. Sienne guessed it was mid-afternoon, both by the sun’s position and by her stomach’s complaint of hunger. She glanced around. There was another boulder like the one the basilisks had hidden by. Off in the distance to the west lay a shimmer that might be an oasis of the kind Dianthe had wanted to see. And directly ahead, on the distant horizon, was a blotch that grew steadily larger. She wished she could see it clearly—and with that wish, the invisible shield contracted, thickened, and a patch before her eyes turned into a lens through which Chirantan was clearly visible.

  She stared at the great city in horror. Plumes of dark smoke rose from its tall towers, turning the southern sky gray. Even with the lens, she couldn’t tell what the movement near the open gate was, but she guessed it must be people fleeing the destruction. And from what she’d already seen Jenani do, it would be terrible destruction.

  The city drew ever nearer, growing larger with every mile and making Sienne feel it was a vast, monstrous creature creeping up on her. She shook her head to break the illusion and realized Alaric’s carpet now flew beside hers. Alaric shouted something and jerked his chin up and toward the city. “What?” Sienne screamed.

  He steered his rug closer and shouted, “…go…overhead…” That time, Sienne got it. He wanted her to rise higher, to go over the wall and avoid the crowds. She nodded, and Alaric pulled into the lead. It felt good seeing him there, a reminder that she wasn’t alone.

  The dark moving mass was now visible as tiny individuals, ant-like in size and movement. She couldn’t tell if any of them noticed the colored flying specks racing toward them. Probably the citizens were too preoccupied with their own flight. Then the carpets were over the wall, which flashed past thirty feet below them in an insubstantial blur, like a line in the sand. Alaric banked his carpet, then rose again, fifty feet, a hundred.

  The towers clustered around them like long-stemmed flowers, their gleaming domes gilded roses or tulips on the verge of blooming. Fire licked at their bases, sending black clouds skyward that the carpets soared through, making Sienne cough. Alaric slowed to avoid hitting the towers, though he was still going faster than a horse could run. Sienne slowed to match him and found Dianthe coming up beside her. Her friend shouted, “Some ride, huh!”

  “I’m not sure I can bear to go back to walking,” Sienne shouted back.

  “No reason we can’t keep these things. Let’s destroy this monster and get down to business.” Dianthe steered her carpet wide around a narrow tower and returned to Sienne’s side.

  Now that the wild wind wasn’t blowing over her body, cooling it, the sun beat down on Sienne again, and sweat prickled beneath her arms and down the small of her back. She was aware of it as a distant annoyance, because all her attention was on the streets of the city, scanning for sight of Jenani. Screams drifted toward her on the wind, and she saw occasional collapsed buildings, but at this height, people were too small to distinguish male from female or even child from adult.

  Alaric, on the other hand, seemed to have a destination in mind. Just as Sienne realized the destruction was more widespread, and that there were fewer people in the streets—fewer that were still moving; there were more and more figures that lay too still below her—they came out from between the towers into an open space made wider by the shattered buildings surrounding it. Sienne recognized one of the great round plazas that were hubs for Chirantan’s many streets. The green park at its heart had been torn up, the fountain shattered and spraying water randomly in the air. More motionless people lay beside it, these all in red, like uniforms.

  Alaric shouted something Sienne couldn’t make out, then dove. Instinctively she matched him, not knowing what he had in mind but certain that following him was the smart thing to do. Then she saw Jenani, standing near the shattered fountain. It was large again, twice Alaric’s height and more heavily muscled. It looked up as they sped toward it. Sienne was close enough to see its expression of total bewilderment before it brought its hands up and clapped them together.

  The air shattered around them like an earthquake, shaking the carpets until Sienne’s teeth rattled. One of her hands slipped off the carpet. Instantly it slowed to a stop, and Sienne screamed as she slid forward down the slope created by her descent. Frantically she groped for the handhold, and found it just as she would have slid over the front of the carpet and fallen twenty feet to the ground. The carpet moved again, and she flew past Jenani’s head, swiftly coming level with the ground and tumbling off in an irrational fear that the carpet would buck her off if she didn’t.

  She got to her feet and ran, not stopping to look back at Jenani, just certain she needed to find cover before it hit her with some other attack. The destruction surrounding the plaza left plenty of places for her to hide behind shattered walls. She tried not to feel grateful for it. She swerved around a body wearing the red uniform—did Chirantan have a city guard?—and dove for what was left of a wall.

  Breathless, she peeked out from behind the fragment of masonry that shielded her body and looked around. Alaric and Dianthe were facing Jenani with their swords drawn, and Ghrita was circling around behind it. Perrin, off to her right, had had the same idea she had and sheltered behind what was left of a different wall. Sienne couldn’t see Kalanath or Vaishant.

  Jenani regarded its tiny opponents with a look of complete disdain. “I can’t believe you escaped,” it said. “Don’t think I’ll be so generous a second time.”

  “We’re not going to be generous at all,” Alaric said, and leaped, sword raised.

  22

  Jenani shimmered and grew fainter, as if it weren’t entirely there. Alaric swung, and overbalanced as his sword went through misty air. The ashwar passed through him, making Alaric stumble nearly into the path of Dianthe’s
sword. Sienne opened her spellbook to fury and began reading, as slowly as she dared. She wasn’t sure fury would work on something that was only semi-corporeal, but if Jenani could do that whenever it liked, she wouldn’t have time to cast the spell if she waited to start when it resumed physical form.

  Jenani shimmered again, growing solid just as Sienne reached the end of the spell. Half a dozen force bolts shot away from her, shaking her to her core. They struck Jenani in its chest, making it scream in pain. Sienne swallowed. Six force bolts ought to be enough to stagger even the biggest creature. They had scared off the second sea monster they’d faced on the way to Omeira. But Jenani didn’t look staggered. It looked furious. It swung around to face Sienne and pointed a finger at her hiding place.

  A bolt of lightning leapt from its hand and sizzled through the air to strike her concealing wall. Sienne yelped and ducked away, scurrying to find a new place as rocks scattered, some of them striking her painfully on the back and shoulders. Perrin darted toward her, joining her in her new shelter. It was a fragment of wall that still had a window hole in it. The rest of the wall lay in pieces all around, making running difficult. “You should—” he began.

  Wind came up all around them, battering them, stealing their breath. Sienne turned and pressed her face against the wall, gasping. Dizziness overwhelmed her, made her vision blurry, but she turned pages by memory and ducked her head over her spellbook. The syllables of the confusion mirror poured out of her, increasing her dizziness and giving rainbow edges to her spellbook pages. Beside her, Perrin shifted as if peering out from around their shelter, but she didn’t have attention to spare for him. She reached the end of the spell and closed her eyes.

  Perrin exclaimed, “You—what was that?”

  She opened her eyes and looked around the side of the wall. Three Siennes darted away in three different directions, heading for cover. A lightning bolt flashed after one of them, missing her by inches. “Mirror,” she said. “Three duplicates of me. They all do the same thing, but they’re more or less autonomous. And it’s impossible to tell the difference between them and the real thing. It should keep Jenani busy while the others attack.”