Race the Sands

by Sarah Beth Durst

  Tamra strode through the stable, unlatching lock after lock on the stall doors and loosening the chains that held the monsters at bay. She could feel the agitation of the kehoks on her skin and taste it in the air. Every nerve in her body hummed in response. She held the monsters still with her mind, as if she were a dam holding back a river.

  The pressure was enormous, but she would not break.

  Behind her, the kehoks pawed the floor. She felt them strain at the weakened chains, inches from freeing themselves. Not yet, she ordered them. And they waited.

  She felt as if she were expanding, her skin stretching, her blood pulsing through a thousand veins, her heartbeat magnified—she was them, and they were her. She breathed with them. Every kehok in the stable, hundreds of them, breathing together as one, with Tamra.

  “How are you doing this?” Raia whispered. Her eyes were wide.

  “They are me, and I am them.” She heard her own voice, distant and hard. My rage is their rage. She felt focused in a way that exceeded anything she’d ever felt before. Crystallized. In this moment, with Shalla at stake, with every fear and every failure culminating inside her, her will smothered theirs. As she finished with the final stall, she pivoted and marched straight toward the stable door. “Get on your lion. Rescue Prince Dar. And most important, keep yourself alive.”

  Raia scurried to the black lion and mounted. “What are you going to do?”

  “We are going to destroy the high augurs,” Tamra said.

  “But . . . but . . . Trainer Verlas! You can’t!”

  “I can. And I will. I’m tearing it all down.”

  And with that, she released the monsters.

  They screamed as one, yanked their chains, and broke free. Behind her, they burst through the doors to their stalls. Tamra lifted the bar over the stable door and pushed it open. The black lion ran out first, carrying Raia. In their wake, Tamra strode out. The monsters followed her, fanning out to either side.

  Outside, people were still fighting. A fire burned in the stands. Most of the tents had been torn apart, and debris littered the campsites. Several bodies lay prone, and the city guards were still trying to quell the violence.

  Tamra selected a silver jaguar the size of a rhino and forced it to stop in front of her. Climbing onto his back, she ordered, “Run!”

  All the hundreds of kehoks ran. She was in the front, leading the way as they thundered through the crowd that had spilled beyond the racetrack, breaking apart the riot, leaving the people stunned.

  Her army poured into the city, filling the streets. Statues that had stood for hundreds of years were knocked over. Palm trees snapped and fell beneath the onslaught. The kehoks flattened everything in their path: carts, fruit stands, benches. . . . People ran screaming into buildings and alleyways. Controlled tightly by Tamra, the kehoks didn’t chase them. United, Tamra and the monsters had one goal: the temple.

  As they ran through the streets, Tamra saw the augur temple perched on the hillside, a hundred times more glorious than the temple in Peron. Every dome was sheathed in gold, and every wall was made of a brilliant white marble. A blue stone path led to an arched gate that had been painted in blue and gold. It had stood for hundreds of years.

  She led her monster army to the front gate and then halted.

  Behind her, the kehoks screamed. She stayed on the back of the silver jaguar and let them scream. When the augurs’ guards rushed to fill the archway, Tamra silenced the kehoks. She spoke into the eerie quiet. “Evacuate the temple, and bring me my daughter and the high augurs.”

  “You can’t come here with them!” one of the guards shouted.

  She fixed her gaze on him. “I can, and I have. Empty the temple.”

  The guard blustered. “No one dares attack the augur temple! It is the bastion of goodness and light and hope for the Becar Empire! This temple has stood for hundreds of years—”

  Enough, she thought. “And it will fall today,” Tamra said.

  She murmured to her army, “Chase them. Herd them. Frighten them. Force them all outside. And then pull the buildings down behind them. Destroy everything.”

  Tamra released the monsters.

  Raia and the black lion hid behind a pillar as Trainer Verlas faced down the temple guards. Wearing black armor with jackal-shaped helmets and carrying eight-foot spears, the guards looked terrifying. Raia had always avoided them as much as possible when she was a student. But Trainer Verlas, with her army of kehoks, regarded them as if they were unruly children.

  She felt the lion’s eagerness. His muscles were quivering beneath her. Leaning forward, she stroked the smooth metal of his mane. “Wait for our moment,” she murmured.

  It came.

  Trainer Verlas unleashed the monsters.

  Urging the lion forward, Raia kept low on his back. She joined the surge as the monsters rushed in through the archway. The guards fell beneath their paws and hooves. As sand stirred around them, Raia couldn’t see whether the guards lived or died. They’d been warned, she thought, trying not to feel sick.

  As the kehoks bashed through doors and plunged inside the temple, Raia guided her lion deeper through the courtyards. She knew the layout of the temple, and she wasn’t distracted by the need to destroy everything in their path. She and the lion quickly left the other kehoks behind.

  The screams and crashes faded, muffled by the thick stone. Prince Dar would be in the old prison cells. They had been used in ancient times to hold those likely to be reborn as kehoks, in hopes of rehabilitation before their fate was sealed. All old temples had them, she’d learned from her lessons. The high augurs of several generations ago had determined that their efforts were better spent persuading the vast swathes of the public to living holy lives, than in trying to save the handful of the doomed, and the prisons were left unused. But she didn’t doubt that they’d been maintained. Everything in the temple was kept in perfect order.

  She and the lion ran past quiet reflection pools and statues of birds and animals in a chain of courtyards, before they were enveloped by the cool shadows of the inner corridors. She caught glimpses of augurs, fleeing with their belongings clutched to their chests. Seeing her, they’d flee in the other direction. She didn’t bother to tell them she wasn’t here for them. Or that there were even worse kehoks the way they were now running.

  She wasn’t sure what to do about the guards that would almost certainly be protecting such an important prisoner. She wished that she had some of Trainer Verlas’s courage. It suddenly occurred to her that her thoughts weren’t focused—she was feeling self-doubt, worrying about the future, all the things she wasn’t supposed to do near a kehok—but the lion hadn’t slowed or veered. He seemed to be following a map in his memory, with no prompting from her. It’s as if he knows we’re trying to rescue his brother, she thought.

  Maybe he does.

  She wondered if he’d ever speak to her again, in her mind.

  As they neared the prison cells, Raia regained her focus and encouraged the lion to slow. He padded silently through the corridor. Ahead she heard voices, barking orders to stand firm.

  Two voices, she thought. Two guards.

  And then a third voice, a woman.

  Three guards. She felt the lion tense. She wasn’t sure what to tell him to do. She was certain this was the place—or maybe they should make certain?

  “What’s going on?” That was Prince Dar!

  Hearing his voice was all it took. The lion, with Raia clinging to him, leaped out of the shadows. He plowed directly into the first guard, knocking him back against a wall, and then spun to bat away a second guard.

  Raia realized what it meant that she didn’t have to guide him: she’d take care of herself. And she could free Prince Dar. She immediately slid off the lion’s back, leaving him to fight the guards. She crossed to the nearest fallen guard, who’d been thrown into the wall. Kneeling, she yanked the keys from his belt.

  She hurried to the prison cell door. Her hands shook
as she slid a key into the lock.

  With any other kehok, she couldn’t have turned her back to him. She couldn’t have trusted that he wouldn’t attack her too. But she trusted the lion absolutely.

  “Prince Dar? Don’t worry. We’re getting you out.”

  “Raia? Is that you? What are you doing here? You can’t be here! You’ll be arrested. They’ll kill you!”

  “Only if we’re caught.”

  The first key failed. She tried the second. There were over a dozen on the key ring, and her hands were shaking so badly it was hard to hold them. Behind her, she heard the guards scream but she refused to look. She kept trying the keys, one after another, until the second to last key turned.

  She felt her heart thud hard against her chest. She was not going to look behind her. If the lion had killed anyone . . . she didn’t want to know. Raia yanked the door open, and Dar stumbled out—he’d been pushing from the opposite side.

  “What . . .” he began. “Zarin?”

  Raia turned. Two guards were prone—she didn’t know if one was alive or not, but the other was screaming. The third had fled. The lion had his massive paw on the screaming guard’s chest, pinning him to the stone floor. Zarin growled as he looked back at Dar and Raia.

  “You came to rescue me?” Dar said to Raia.

  “We both did.” Raia pulled Dar with her to the lion. Climbing on, she scooted forward so that there was room for Dar behind her. He climbed on and wrapped his arms around her waist. He smelled faintly of mildew mixed with incense, the scent of the older parts of the temple.

  “The high augurs won’t let us just leave,” Dar said.

  “The high augurs are distracted right now,” Raia told him. She leaned forward and asked the kehok. “Please take us away from here.”

  It was a vague order—the kind that no ordinary kehok could obey—but the lion leaped forward, kicking the downed guard with his hind paws, and raced through the corridors. He ran as if he knew the way, which was either due to Raia’s knowledge of the temple layout or whatever he remembered from his life as Emperor Zarin.

  As they neared the front of the temple, Raia heard noises. Crashing. The walls were crumbling up ahead. A pillar had fallen. Dust choked the air. She saw people, augurs, running from the building, where they were herded by kehoks, who kept them pinned nearby.

  The lion didn’t slow, even when Dar called out to him.

  Trainer Verlas will take care of it, Raia thought. Her trainer often talked about how she was too old, that now was the time for the young. But Raia didn’t want anything to do with this. She’d happily leave it to Trainer Verlas to finish what she’d come here to do. Raia had one goal: escape to safety with Prince Dar. That was enough for her.

  She’d face tomorrow when it came. For now . . . safety was all she wanted.

  And safety meant running.

  They ran through the streets of the city, toward the palace, and then beyond it. The racetrack loomed ahead of them, but the lion didn’t slow. He kept running, carrying them out into the desert. As the chaos of the city faded behind them, Raia felt she was back to doing what she did best: running away. Except this time, she wasn’t alone.

  “Find Shalla.”

  Tamra planted the image of her daughter into the mind of the nearest dozen kehoks, and she sent them plunging into the temple. “Save her.”

  She mounted the silver jaguar and ran with them. Ahead of her, clearing the way, the kehoks plowed down the guards in their path and tore tapestries off the walls and knocked through pillars.

  Not all the kehoks understood the word “save,” but she kept tight control over them, as well as the ones that were holding the augurs who’d spilled out of the building. Killing them wasn’t the goal, and she refused to allow the monsters to turn this into an indiscriminate bloodbath. She wasn’t after ordinary augurs; it was the high augurs she wanted. And she’d seen none of them.

  The temple was a warren of countless corridors filled with exquisite tapestries and ancient mosaics. But Tamra wasn’t interested in the architecture or its history. This is too slow, she thought. “Topple it.”

  She reached to the kehoks outside, and they began to wreck the temple around them—slamming into pillars, clawing apart the walls, puncturing the roofs. If the high augurs were here, this would flush them out.

  But she heard only crashing. There were no human voices. The high augurs were hiding her somewhere. She had to be close!

  “Stop,” she ordered them. “Keep searching.”

  Deeper inside the temple, she heard the howl of jackals. An archway of darkness lay in front of them. She knew this . . . she’d heard legends about the labyrinth in the heart of the temple, where the high augurs met in secret. This is where they are, she decided.

  She slowed the kehoks and stared at the opening. Two jackals were chained on opposite sides of the doorway. They cowered in the face of her monsters. She’d heard the walls were coated in poison, and the darkness was absolute. She had no torch. If she proceeded, she would have to wander through a poisonous maze in the dark in hopes that luck led her to her daughter.

  Screw that, she thought. I’m done playing by their rules.

  “Break the walls,” Tamra ordered.

  The kehoks hurled themselves at the stone. Again and again, until the ancient stone began to crack. Fissures ran through the stone, and along the ceiling, until at last the ceiling broke apart and sunlight poured through. The kehoks kept battering the walls until they crumbled. The outer labyrinth walls crashed down,in a cloud of dust. Tamra urged the silver jaguar forward, and they climbed over the rubble. She kept the other kehoks fanned out around her on either side as they picked their way over the crushed labyrinth.

  She faced a doorway, shrouded by the dust-choked air. “Shalla?” she called.

  “Mama?” a voice called back, and then was muffled.

  A deeper voice said, “This is the point where we compromise. We have your daughter, as you can see. Cease your destruction.”

  Stop, she ordered the kehoks.

  The deep voice began to list out demands, beginning with her immediate surrender of the black lion kehok—

  “And if I refuse?” Tamra called out. Her heart was hammering hard within her chest. She felt every beat. Her skin tingled. She’d never felt more tied to a moment. My Shalla is within that room. With them.

  A woman’s voice said flatly, “Then your daughter dies, crushed by falling rock. A tragedy that you caused with the damage to the temple.”

  “You cannot hope to win,” another chimed in. “Any moment now, the temple guards will descend. You and your black lion atrocity cannot prevail. You will be outnumbered.”

  They don’t know I have an army, Tamra realized.

  “Is this the verdict of all the high augurs?” she asked. “Is there none of you who will defend an innocent child?”

  The deeper voice again. “There is more at stake than one life. You do not understand what the cost will be to Becar.”

  “The cost of what? The cost of people knowing the high augurs are as corrupt as a kehok?” Tamra asked. “Are you afraid they’ll realize you murdered their emperor and arranged for his soul to be eternally tormented, purely for whatever political power play you wanted? That they’ll know you condemned Prince Dar to die for reasons you’ve engineered?”

  “All for the good of Becar,” another voice said. “You have a child. You understand the lengths one would go to to protect it. The Becaran Empire is our child.”

  “Bullshit,” Tamra said. “You don’t lie to your child.” Raising her voice, she said, “Shalla, are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

  There were murmured voices again. Beside her, the kehoks pawed at the rubble. But under her tight control, they stayed silent. She knew the others on the edges of the temple were also paused in their destruction. She could sense them coiled like a spring.

  She tried again. “Shalla? Are you there?”

  From within the chamber she heard mu
rmured voices, and then she heard Shalla’s sweet voice. “I’m here! Mama . . . Augur Yorbel . . . he’s dead.”

  She didn’t expect to feel grief at that, but she did. I trusted him before, and he betrayed me, she thought. But she’d never wanted him dead.

  “You see, then,” one of the high augurs said, “how serious we are.”

  “Sweetheart, close your eyes,” she told Shalla. “No matter what happens. Keep them shut.” And then she took a deep breath.

  Past and future didn’t exist.

  Consequences didn’t matter.

  There was only this moment, like she’d told Raia when she raced. She had this one moment to change the world. “Do not touch my daughter,” she said.

  The high augur within the chamber replied, “We will not harm her if you—”

  But she wasn’t talking to him. “Kill the rest.”

  She released her mental grip on the nearest monsters. They threw themselves through the door. Tamra rode the silver jaguar through the doorway. Surveying the chamber, she stayed mounted on the silver jaguar as the high augurs screamed.

  Screamed and died.

  She felt the screams inside her, welcomed them.

  In one corner, Shalla was huddled beside the body of Augur Yorbel. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and her hands were pressed over her ears. Controlling the kehoks, Tamra kept them away from Shalla. But she let her monsters do as they wished with the rest.

  Blood sprayed on the walls, on the ceiling, on Tamra, on Shalla’s student robes, and Tamra bore witness to it all. The head high augur died when a spider kehok tore his head from his body. An elderly man was impaled by the horn of rhino with a hide like a crocodile. A lizard kehok gnawed on the body of a third. Watching, Tamra felt as if she were fraying apart inside, as the images embedded themselves deep in what would become her nightmares. But she did not let herself look away. She was causing this; she had to bear witness.

  When all eight high augurs lay dead, Tamra sent the kehoks to join the others, rounding them up as if they were within a corral, circling the other augurs. Stay, she told them.

  They stayed.