The Desert Prince

by Brett, Peter V.

  “Whatever you wish it to be,” Abban replies.

  I hold out the apple slowly, letting him sniff at it and me. When he takes it I reach out and touch him. He digs at the ground with his hooves, hungry to run.

  “Easy, boy,” I take gentle hold of the bridle. Da’s old messenger horse was named Dawn Runner, because Da was always running to make it to sunrise. But I ent my da.

  “Gonna call you Dusk Runner.”

  42

  DUST

  “Everam’s Watch guards the desert road,” Rojvah says. “It is the last village before we cross into the waste.”

  “Read about it in Da’s old Messenger journals,” I say. “Called Lookout Hill, back then. On a clear day you can see miles into the desert from the hilltop.”

  “Oh, I’d like to see that,” Selen says.

  “We’ll camp there tonight,” I say, “even if it costs a few hours.”

  “That will not be possible,” Rojvah says.

  “Why not?” I ask, but before she answers, we round a bend and I see the town in the distance. To the others it’s still a speck on the horizon, but to my eyes it’s just up the road.

  One of Da’s better journal illustrations was an idyllic watercolor of Lookout Hill. I used to stare at it for hours—a lonely watchtower atop a proud hill with a small town at its base, overlooking a line of wayposts shrinking and fading into the endless sandy flats of the waste until they touched the pink-and-blue horizon of a setting sun. The colors were so vivid, I felt like I’d been there myself. I’d been hoping that seeing that tower in real life would make me feel a little closer to him.

  But Da made that painting before the Krasians came. The lonely watchtower is gone, replaced by a walled fort that dominates the entire hilltop, flying the scorpion banner of the Mehnding tribe.

  The fort’s thick walls are lined with crenellations for archers, rock slingers, and scorpions—gigantic crank bows that fire stingers three times the size of a Sharum spear. Five tall watchtowers look out over the town below, standing silent guardian over the wayposts disappearing into the waste.

  “They gonna let us pass without a problem?” I ask.

  “The Mehnding guard against enemies from the waste, not fools walking into it,” Rojvah says. “In any event, they will not hinder emissaries traveling under the royal seal.”

  I look over at her. “Since when do we have a royal seal?”

  Rojvah shrugs. A hint of smile quirks her lips, and beneath the jasmine perfume she smells of satisfaction. “I had Arick bat his eyes at one of the palace clerks and ask after her mother. I had all the time in the world to borrow the seal and return it.”

  “The woman talked for hours,” Arick growls, and Selen barks a laugh.

  Rojvah takes the lead when we reach the town. She gives a false name and produces the writ from the throne empowering her and her entourage—a Sharum bodyguard and two chin servants—to cross the desert and treat with the Majah.

  I can tell Selen chafes at the servant’s role, but I’m happy to keep my head down and my mouth shut. We don’t linger, setting immediately through the gate and onto the desert road, even as evening approaches. The wayposts—great stone obelisks, cut deep with wards—grant islands of succor, even as they lead the way through a featureless land.

  “They’re watching us,” I say as we make camp at the first waypost. Looking back at the towers, I can see the guards spying on us with their distance lenses.

  “It is their duty to watch over the desert road,” Arick says.

  “Ent the eyes on this side we’ve got to worry over,” Selen says.

  “Indeed,” Rojvah says. “The Majah will have csars on the road to the city, and towers that can see far.”

  “How do we avoid being seen?” I ask.

  “We don’t, unless we leave the road, and we would be fools to do that. We have the seal of Royal Messengers. Let them see us coming, and take us right to the Damaji.”

  “Ay,” Selen says, “except every Messenger that’s gone into the desert for the last fifteen summers ent been seen again.”

  “It is a crime against Everam to harm a Messenger,” Rojvah says. “No doubt they are safe in a silk prison.”

  “Like your grandmum kept us,” I note.

  Rojvah smiles. “And we see how well that held you.”

  * * *

  —

  With no thick Krasian curtains to block the light, I wake well before dawn, feeling the sun’s approach like a weight on my chest.

  It unsettles folk to see me at my normal speed, but the others are still asleep, so there’s no need to act slow. The animals startle, suddenly discovering food in front of them. I saddle Dusk Runner, stowing my pack and sleeping roll while he’s still eating. I lead him to the western side of the obelisk, where we will be in shadow for sunrise.

  Among the supplies Abban provided for the desert crossing are canopies for our saddles—stout canvas on simple poles to grant shade to horse and rider, both. I set mine up and take care of my necessaries, climbing into the saddle before the others begin to stir.

  Feel like I’m a blob of butter, waiting for the skillet to heat. Slowly, the sun crests the horizon, flooding the flat plain with light. It feels like fire, closing in from all sides.

  I don’t mind heat, or cold for that matter. I love feeling the change of seasons on my skin. But winter or summer, I burn quickly in bright sun. A shine that might turn other folk a little pink leaves me red and blistered. Even the scant bit of light that penetrates the shade and my clothes is enough to itch.

  The loose Krasian clothes makes sense now—allowing bodies to breathe while shielding skin from the beating sun. I button up my jacket and wind the scarf over my face and head, leaving only a thin eye slit. I put on my gloves and I strap into the saddle, dozing away the early hours as Dusk Runner follows the other horses across flatlands of clay, cracked by the baking sun. The cracked flats go as far as the eye can see, like a flagstone path to infinity. My compass and the sun might point us in the right direction, but without the wayposts, we’d quickly lose the path and risk wandering in the desert until our stores ran out.

  “Thought the desert was supposed to be sand,” Selen grumbles after a long day of trudging.

  Rojvah snorts. “Did you expect a perfect line where the lush grasses of the green lands turn suddenly to grit?”

  She’s trying to get a rise out of Selen, and I can smell it working. “We’re in a dried-up lake bed,” I cut in before Selen can retort. “Should get to the other side tomorrow. That’s when you’ll start findin’ sand in your shoes.”

  Rojvah looks at me in surprise. “How do you know so much?”

  “Da made the Messenger run from Fort Rizon to Fort Krasia for years,” I say. “Crossed the desert more than a dozen times, and wrote about it in his journals. Read those books over and over, tryin’ to know him better.”

  Selen loosens her scarf to wipe sweat from her brow. “What’s there to say, apart from It’s hot and everything’s dead?”

  “Everythin’ ent dead.” I take a deep breath, letting the silk filter out the clouds of clay dust in the air. “There’s life here. I can smell it. Sleepin’ like a bear in winter, but it’s there, waiting for the rain to come and wake it up, if only for a while.”

  “Alagai blood,” Arick mutters under his breath, too low for the others to hear.

  “What’s that, Arick?” I ask cheerfully, turning all eyes his way.

  Arick smiles at me. “Just clearing my throat, cousin.”

  Selen and Rojvah ride with their canopies up, but Arick leaves his stowed, even as the sun beats down on his head. His skin isn’t as vulnerable as mine, but he is pale by Krasian standards, and likely no friend to the sun. He has wrapped himself carefully in his Sharum blacks, but he doesn’t seem uncomfortable. He smells…proud.

  “
Don’t know how you can wear black in this sun,” Selen says. “Doesn’t it just absorb the heat?”

  “I’ve dreamed of wearing the black for my entire life,” Arick says. “I was in my mother’s belly when she defended the walls of Everam’s Reservoir from the alagai. There wasn’t a boy my age who could stand against me in the practice yard, but one by one, they were all called to sharaj while I was left behind.”

  He spreads his arms, lifting his face to the sun. “Now at last I am free to be who I really am, and no sun is going to make me hide, or drive me back into a jester’s robes.”

  * * *

  —

  We make camp under another of the ancient obelisks. Da’s journals say the wayposts project a forbidding twenty paces in every direction, enough to shelter a small caravan.

  The horses are hobbled and blinded. The saddle canopies, drawn with great wards of unsight, have been raised to hide them from above. The Mehnding lands were hunted clean of demons, but almost two days into the waste, we’ve crossed from their protection.

  At dusk the heat leaches from the ground and dissipates, leaving a cold that bites like a winter night. I don’t mind the chill, because it brings power. My night eyes come to life as magic seeps up from the ground to drift along the flats like a low rolling fog.

  Drawn to the wards, the magic flows through us on its way to the waypost. The others barely notice, but for me it’s like jumping into the swimming hole on a hot day. Power clings to me, like coming out wet.

  I reach out with my expanding senses, but even with night eyes and bat ears, the demons get uncomfortably close before I spot them. Corelings have brighter auras than surface creatures, but they’ve evolved to mask it by adapting to the terrain they hunt.

  Swamp and bog demons hide underwater and in trees. Wind demons keep to the clouds. Wood demons have armor so thick the outer layers are hardened and magic-dead, masking the strength within.

  Clay demons remind me of the turtles Mam taught me to catch by the brook. Tough, muscular bodies encased in a hard shell the exact color of the flats all around us, thick and magic-dead.

  Drawn to the light of our fire, they stalk in on short, thick limbs, slow and silent, but Da wrote they can be terrible fast when they charge—butting their blunt, armored heads hard enough to shatter stone. They don’t have teeth precisely, just a sharp beak of armor to crush and sever chunks to swallow whole. Their retractable claws can tunnel through most anything, including steel armor plate.

  I pull Mam’s Cloak of Unsight closer around me as they take their time, circling the camp to view it from all sides before closing in. I string my bow and take an arrow from my quiver, but I don’t know what good it will do. The demons’ shells are blunt and smooth, giving no magic to power the piercing wards on the arrowheads. Anything other than a direct hit will just skitter off, and even a perfect shot might shatter against the shell.

  Selen sees me nock the arrow and comes over. She has her armor plates in, but they don’t seem to hinder her easy grace. Even her helmet is unobtrusive, hidden beneath the scarf covering her head, save for the warded rim that grants her wardsight. Her Cloak of Unsight is draped around her, wards glowing softly as they shield her from the demon eyes.

  She scans the night, smelling of frustration. “You see something?”

  “Four of them,” I say, “circling in close.”

  Everyone looks, but I can tell none of them see. The demons are in no hurry, and the wait is agonizing before at last Arick points at one of them. “There.”

  He steps forward for a closer look.

  “Stay close to the waypost, brother,” Rojvah says. Even her white robes have started to orange at the hems from the clay dust, but the shawl she’s placed over her shoulders is stark white, stitched in silver thread with wards of unsight much like those on our cloaks. Like Selen and I, she is invisible to demons.

  Arick is not.

  “The protection extends twenty paces.” Arick takes nineteen precise paces forward, peering into the night for a better look at the foe. His shield is at the ready, and he grips the spear so tightly I can hear his muscles creak. He smells of adrenaline, excitement, and hunger.

  “Nothin’ to gain, picking a fight tonight, Arick,” I say before he does something wood-headed.

  “You said yourself there are only four of them.” Arick flexes his arms and shoulders, limbering his muscles. “We could kill them and have done.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Selen asks. “Fifty miles from the nearest earshot, and you want to fight corelings when you don’t have to?”

  “My brother has not learned to fear the alagai,” Rojvah says. “Too many tales of glory, too little experience.”

  Arick rolls his eyes. “My sister speaks as if she’s ever seen more than an alagai’s boiled bones.”

  “Ent wrong, though,” I say. “One thing to stare down a demon over the wards, or watch one dance to your tune. Seein’ one cripple your friend and come racing at you with bloody talons is somethin’ different.”

  As if on cue, the demon Arick was eyeing suddenly charges. It does not look agile, but even I am shocked by its speed as it lowers its blunt armored head and horns, smashing heavily against the forbidding.

  Silver light flashes just before the demon smashes into Arick, the light bowing in midair stopping the charge and throwing the demon back.

  Arick, for all his courage and hunger to prove himself, is caught off guard at the sudden assault. He gives a cry and stumbles back just as the wards activate, thrown off balance as the anticipated blow never comes. He lands on his backside, spear and shield clattering, but no one laughs.

  Another clay demon strikes the wards even as the first shakes itself off and rolls back to its feet. Growling, it digs claws into the clay, readying for another charge. The horses whinny in fear, pulling at the stakes, drawing the cries of yet more demons in the distance.

  “Standing there without a cloak, you’re callin’ ’em like a bell at suppertime,” I tell Arick as he gets to his feet, murder in his eyes.

  “Arick asu Sikvah!” Rojvah snaps, and the mention of his mother gets her brother’s attention. “A Sharum’s duty is to defend their people, not to seek battle for the sake of foolish pride and lust for ichor. We have a week at least left in the crossing. Will you leave us to attempt it without our strongest fighter?”

  “You assume I will die, sister,” Arick growls.

  “I assume you will act with discipline,” Rojvah retorts, “not shame your mother by throwing yourself at alagai talons the first chance you get.”

  Arick scowls, but he breathes away his anger and returns to the obelisk, setting down his spear and shield. He opens his kamanj case and rosins the bow, bracing the instrument’s spiked end on a thick leather band that wraps around his thigh.

  The bow seems flimsy and delicate in his big hands. His meaty fingers are less nimble than mine, but they move with workmanlike competence over the strings as he plays his father Rojer Halfgrip’s most famous composition, the Song of Waning.

  Don’t know what I expected, but Arick’s playing is short of it. He gets all the notes right, but Hary Roller could play circles around him. Night, I’ve heard backyard jug bands in Tibbet’s Brook play with more spirit.

  Still, the defensive field Arick weaves around us is undeniable. The clay demons cease trying to batter through the wards and back away. There’s a cry from above and a great flap of leathern wings as a silently circling wind demon flies off in search of other prey.

  “How come you don’t have a warded cloak?” Selen asks.

  “He does.” Rojvah crosses her arms. “A cloak with a legend all its own. But he refuses to wear it.”

  “Halfgrip’s motley cloak,” I breathe. Arick’s da is a bit of a hero to me. He saved almost as many lives as mine, but he did it without fighting anyone. Just his fiddle and hi
s magic cloak.

  “If you love it so much, you wear it,” Arick growls. “I’d as soon wear your white dama’ting shawl.”

  Rojvah remains outwardly calm, but her scent is angry, now. “Would that I could, brother. This trip frees you to dress as you please, but I can hardly slip unnoticed into Majah lands in the clothing I favor. They would stone me for a heasah.”

  “The Majah will treat a greenland Jongleur with no more respect than a heasah,” Arick says. “At least you like to perform. Come, sing so I can put this cursed instrument down.”

  Rojvah still smells of irritation, but she kneels beside her brother and lowers her veil. She begins to hum, building tension in the air, before vocalizing a series of notes that weave into Arick’s melody, at first matching him, then, as Rojvah touches the choker at her throat, overwhelming the kamanj.

  And then she begins to sing.

  If Arick was a workman, his sister is an artisan. Rojvah effortlessly delivers a song with passion and power that her brother could never have mustered, laying a musical spell over the camp that has a noticeable effect. Arick drove the demons back, but they drifted at the edge of the music, auras still predatory, waiting for the protection to wane.

  Rojvah’s music calms the demons’ auras, and they lose interest, taking no more notice of us than they would if we all wore Cloaks of Unsight.

  Arick doesn’t waste time, taking bow from string and tucking his kamanj back into its case. He smells of shame, anger, and jealousy all at once. It’s clear he wants no part of whatever his sister is building.

  But I do. Her song calls to me, thrumming in my blood, resonating in my bones. I wonder if this is how the corelings felt when her spell fell over them.

  I reach for my pipes, not knowing if I am out of line as I fumble them to my lips. Doesn’t matter. Couldn’t stop myself if I wanted. Something primal compels me to join the song.

  Rojvah nods as I blow the first notes, weaving my piping around her voice. She begins to test me, changing key and altering the pace, but following her is effortless, like following her scent through the hedge maze in the Krasian palace gardens when we were kids. I want to laugh at the joy of it.