The Desert Prince

by Brett, Peter V.

  I lay a gentle hand on his cheek, feeling my own face screw up in anguish. “I’m sorry, my prince. I wish there was another way.”

  “You won’t get away,” he groans.

  I put the veil around his face, forcing the twisted silk between his teeth. I shouldn’t say anything. I should just go. But the words are coming and there’s no stopping them. “You could have cried for help at any time, but you didn’t.”

  Chadan turns to look me in the eye, his face so expressionless it would do a dama’ting proud, leaving me to see only myself reflected in his eyes. Like sharusahk, he offers me nothing, turning my own attack against me.

  It’s more than I can bear and I break the stare. Without looking back, I move quickly to the mirror, but it, too, judges. Like Chadan, I see only myself reflected in the silvered glass, facing the empty stare of heroes’ skulls.

  I’m forced to meet their gaze as I search for something that might trigger the mechanism to open it.

  I needn’t have bothered. The mirror opens as I approach, and I see the glass is transparent on the other side, allowing those within to observe the hall and ensure it is empty before exiting.

  Micha stands there alone, waiting. “I guided the others to a lower level and returned for you, sister.”

  “How much did you see?” I ask.

  “Enough,” Micha says.

  “You could have intervened,” I say, thankful she did not.

  Micha’s eyes crinkle as she smiles behind her veil. “You don’t need saving anymore, brother.”

  Brother. It is what Chadan and the others call me, and it feels right. But here? With Micha? It doesn’t. Is that what I am to her?

  Should I have to choose?

  I take her hand as the mirror clicks shut behind us. “Whatever I am to others, we will always be sisters.”

  Micha squeezes my hand, and I see her eyes are wet. My hand itches for the tiny, tinkling tear bottles that hang at my waist, but Micha surprises me, wiping away the precious tears with the cuff of her sleeve.

  “There will be time for tears later. Come, sister.”

  * * *

  —

  The Sharum’ting passage narrows as it goes, becoming so tight I have to twist to keep my shoulders from scraping the walls. It tapers further, until a big man would not be able to pass at all, making the passage useless to Sharum.

  That’s good news against pursuit, but I’ve always been broader in the arms and shoulders than other women, and my months in sharaj and the Maze have layered muscle over my natural span. At first I am simply unable to move at speed, but soon the press of stone triggers a wrenching fear that tightens my stomach. If the tunnel constricts any more, I could get stuck. Even now, the passage is too tight for me to draw a full breath. I feel suffocated by it.

  Micha has no such problems. My sister moves with an efficient, skittering gait I am unable to replicate, and it is clear she is holding back to allow me to keep pace.

  “Where are the others?” I ask, trying to keep thoughts of getting stuck from taking over my mind.

  “In a safe place,” Micha says, “We will join them soon. Release your breath. One last squeeze before the passage widens.”

  The idea of releasing what little breath I have to squeeze yet further into a crushing tunnel terrifies me, but I trust in my sister and obey, imagining my fear releasing with the air as I blow out my breath and contract my chest and shove myself into a space my body has no business fitting. I expect the walls to scrape against me, abrading my fine silks, but the stone is polished smooth from untold ages of use. Only my armlet grates against the stone, and I think it would be a fitting irony if that were what catches me fast.

  But then I pop through the choke point, and movement gets easier. The tunnel widens quickly after that.

  50

  PASSAGES

  I run my fingertips over the blood-locked armlet, wondering if even now Belina is using it to map Micha’s tunnels. At any moment, the dama’ting could bring it to life, crippling me where I stand. We are doing as she bade, but it is not in the nature of dama’ting to forgive an assault upon their person.

  “I can’t believe what you did to Belina,” I say.

  “When we were in sharaj, my spear sisters and I were trained to bully the nie’dama’ting,” Micha says. “The priestesses encouraged it. They called it ‘A reminder to be humble before Everam.’ Nie’dama’ting study sharusahk two hours a day. My sisters and I studied for twenty.”

  Twenty hours a day? Even after months of hard training, the number shocks me. “How is that possible?”

  Micha shrugs. “All things are possible, when your sense of self is stripped away in sharaj. There were five of us then, nieces and lesser daughters of the Deliverer, too holy for the black, yet deemed unfit for the white. The Damajah took us into the underpalace and gave us to her eunuch drillmaster, Enkido.”

  “Gave you?” I ask.

  “Like dogs to be trained.” The words horrify me, but Micha speaks them calmly—a pain long since accepted. “You took orders from Chikga, but we belonged to Enkido. If we were not strong enough to survive his training, we knew we would not be missed.”

  “Surely Father—” I begin.

  “The Shar’Dama Ka only had eyes for the war and his sons,” Micha cuts in. “We disappeared for years, and I do not think he even noticed.”

  I don’t know why this surprises me. My father never had time for me, either. “And then?”

  “We were beaten,” Micha says. “Sleep-deprived. Poisoned. Scarred. Made to visualize death until we lost our fear of it. Enkido took five simpering princesses, reduced us to nothing, and then rebuilt us into Everam’s spear sisters.”

  I want to say something. To lay my hand on her, or offer comfort, but for all our years together, Micha has never needed comfort from me. I don’t know how to offer it now in a way she will accept.

  “It wasn’t all bad,” Micha goes on. “In those years I came to know and rely upon my sisters. All of us vied for Drillmaster Enkido’s rare words of praise like hounds for scraps. We hated him at first, but he had a father’s love for us all, and in time we shared daughters’ love for him.

  “This is what training does,” she goes on. “It is how the clerics take people and turn them into weapons. A brutal start to destroy your old world, then they craft a false world around you, this one with an illusion of stability. It makes you love those hurt beside you more for your shared pain. It makes you love those doing the hurting, for they do it to teach you. To better you. Instead, you direct your hurt at their enemies.”

  Micha sighs. “I did not question it until I came to Hollow. I was still the Damajah’s creature, then, and your mother knew it. She trusted me to protect you, but not to instruct you. But living in Hollow, falling in love, taught me how much bigger the world was than secret tunnels and assassination. I thought you greenlanders soft, but in time I came to see I would kill anyone who tried to make you hard. In this, like so many things, I failed you.”

  “You could never fail me,” I say. “Perhaps fate wanted me hard.”

  “Inevera,” Micha says.

  “Do you still believe Enkido loved you?” I ask.

  Micha is quiet a long time. “In his way, I think he did,” she says at last, “but he, too, was stunted by sharaj. I am not certain he truly understood what love was. I did not, when I first came to your mother’s court.”

  I wonder if Chadan understands love. If even I do. “Do you love him, still?”

  Micha nods. “We filled as many tear bottles as any daughters when he fell to the alagai. Even now, I cannot sift who I am from what he made me.” She shrugs. “It is too much for me to judge. So I love him as a daughter would, without condition.”

  I nod, unable to keep my thoughts from drifting back to Chadan, left tied and humiliated in the hall above.
Did he ever truly love me? Did I, him? Or were our feelings twisted by what sharaj and the alagai put us through? Are we ourselves, or what Chikga made of us?

  Is it still possible to sift the real me from the result?

  After a few twists and turns, Micha stops, lifting a large wardstone from the wall. It is hinged on top, hiding a lever. When she pulls it, there is a thunk in the floor beneath our feet. She replaces the ward and pushes down on a large cornerstone on the floor, opening a hidden trap.

  “A secret passage inside a secret passage?” I ask.

  “Sharik Hora is riddled with them,” Micha says. “Some the dama and dama’ting have used for centuries, but others were lost to time until the Damajah used the alagai hora to divine their locations for her agents.”

  Even after all I’ve seen, it’s hard to think of Nanny Micha as an agent of my father’s mysterious Jiwah Ka, but she moves about these tunnels like they are a part of her. There is so much about her I don’t know.

  “You first,” Micha says. “Hang from the lip and the drop is not far.”

  The room below is dimly lit, but still bright enough that I shield my eyes after moving through the dark tunnel. I do as she says, dropping lightly to a smooth stone floor.

  I look up to see Micha follow, tumbling out of the path of the trapdoor as it swings shut by some hidden mechanism. She drops silently beside me as my eyes adjust to the dim light filtering through shuttered windows. There is a firepit, water troughs, buckets and ladle, benches to sit and lie upon.

  “It’s a sweat room,” I realize, but like everything in Sharik Hora, it is built out of human bones in a macabre display. The troughs and buckets are shaped of interlocking bone, sealed with resin to keep them from leaking. The thought of soaking in water ladled from a hero’s skull makes me gag. “Creator. Why would anyone come here?”

  Micha nods. “Even the dama believe it is haunted. They whisper these are the bones of martyrs too anguished to find the lonely path, their souls trapped on Ala. Once, I saw a dama come here seeking a vision. Another time, two nie’dama stoked the fire on a dare, but lost their nerve at the ladle. Otherwise everyone avoids the place.”

  “Guess that helps keep it secret,” Selen steps into the light with Rojvah beside her, “but it ent a place you want to wait around in.”

  I rush to her, and this time she opens her arms, squeezing tight. “You’ve still got a lot of explaining to do,” she says in my ear.

  “As do you.” I crush her tighter against me. For this moment, none of that matters.

  Micha moves to a corner of the room behind the piles of sweat stones—stacks of polished obsidian heated with fire to make steam. She shifts a few bones and there is a click as she pushes the corner inward, creating a space wide enough for us to crouch and squeeze through.

  We follow as Micha leads us down, down into the undercity. Mostly we travel the secret ways, but occasionally our path leads through seldom-trafficked rooms and halls of the temple proper. I lose track of the twists and turns before she opens one last hidden door, revealing a large room nestled deep beneath Sharik Hora.

  Inside, everything is coated in a thick layer of dust, the place doubtless undisturbed since my father led the exodus from Desert Spear almost twenty years ago.

  “This is a Sharum’ting safe room,” Micha says, lighting skull lamps like those I saw above. “The Majah have more space than they require, so there was never any need to search for hidden chambers. There is ancient magic here—centuries of heroes’ bones shaping and concentrating its protections.” She looks at my armlet. “Belina will no more be able to track you in this place than she might hear a whisper in a room full of shouting warriors. We are safe here.”

  The words are comforting, but I cannot help but feel unsure. I know something of hora magic, but the magic of heroes’ bones is still a mystery to me.

  “Ay, safe until we starve.” Selen looks decidedly uncomfortable amid the bleached bones.

  “That won’t be a concern.” Micha leads us to the back of the chamber, where a door leads to a natural cavern complete with a waterfall and pool. “The oasis is above us. There is fresh water and fish.” She gestures beside the pool where a field of mushrooms grow. “Those are safe to eat. There are stores of honey, nuts, and salt, as well.”

  Indeed, this hidden shelter seems to have everything we need. There is a sleeping area, Sharum’ting blacks with plates of fired clay, and weapons…

  “What are those?” I ask in wonder, moving to the racks. There are standard shields trimmed with what look like ulnae and radii. Arrows and spears with bone heads. A mace, made from what looks like a man’s thigh lashed to a large skull.

  “Weapons and armor blessed with sharik hora,” Micha says. “A last resort if the alagai ever attack the Holy City.”

  “Things get that bad, are a few bone spears going to be enough to save us?” I ask.

  “It is always the warrior you must put your faith in,” Micha says. “Never the weapon. Remain here while I am gone. Protect one another.”

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “To meet Darin and find my nephew,” Micha says. “I have not seen Arick since he was in swaddling. If the Sharum have harmed him…”

  I think of the swollen, purple bruises on Arick’s pale face, and on the faces of his captors. “They were not gentle, sister, but trust that for every bruise, there are three Arms of Everam similarly marked.”

  Micha grunts, but it is a prideful sound. “I would expect no less from my spear sister Sikvah’s son.”

  Selen and I change into warrior blacks, then set about dusting off the ancient chamber as we gather food and water. Only Rojvah seems at ease amid the leering skulls.

  Hours pass, and I run out of work to do, pacing the chamber until at last Micha returns with Darin and Arick, the latter now clad in the white-sleeved blacks of the temple guard. His eyes and hands darkened with makeup, he appears indistinguishable from the real thing.

  Arick and I have yet to be formally introduced, but Micha takes her nephew aside as soon as the door seals behind them.

  Darin is still clad in what looks like a cross between farmer’s denim and Krasian high fashion. He has retrieved his satchel from wherever the guards stored it, and his pipes and his mother’s knife are on his belt, along with a sack of what I assume are the other belongings the Sharum confiscated.

  “What?” he asks warily as he catches me staring.

  I smile. “Just thinking you should compliment your tailor. Rare to see you looking so fashion-forward.”

  “Ay, you know Darin,” Selen says. “Moaned and complained the whole time they were measuring him, but don’t let it fool you. He loves skulking around in his bespoke denim britches.”

  I laugh, and suddenly I’m Princess Olive again, ten summers old with my best friends in the world.

  Arick has drifted to the rack of ancient hora weapons. He lifts a bone spear, putting it through the deft spins of a complex sharukin. Micha puts her hand on her heart, and Rojvah joins them, producing a tear bottle for her aunt as tears stream down her face.

  Darin sniffs the air, then turns his head to look directly at the hidden door at the far end of the room.

  “How about we go fishin’?”

  * * *

  —

  Darin does all the fishing while Selen and I sit by the water. I don’t know how he does it, but he hooks fish after fish, even as he recounts their adventures on the road south.

  You’d never know it to look at him, but when shy Darin has a story to tell, his Jongleur training kicks in. Voices. Accents. Impressions. There’s more expression on the faces of his characters than I’ve ever seen him display on his own.

  Selen heckles a bit at first when he forgets something or misremembers one of her favorite parts, but then both of us fall under Darin’s spell.

 
Selen squeezes my hand when he speaks of the remains of Mother’s escort, and I bite my lip to keep from crying. A few minutes later, we clutch at each other, howling with laughter at Darin’s impression of an innkeeper arguing with her husband, or the way the merchant smelled. He makes himself the butt of half the jokes, giving the impression of a buffoon Selen all but carried on her back, but I can see in the way she looks at him that it’s nothing close to truth.

  I wonder if they’ve kissed again, and it’s such a normal thought that it seems alien to me. When did I last have time for the luxury of wondering who Selen’s been kissing?

  It’s my turn next. I don’t have Darin’s flair, but I try to be honest, even when it paints me in poor light.

  Parts of the tale feel different in the telling than they did when lived, another skin I’ve begun to shed. But then I speak of Chadan and my spear brothers, and find some of my feelings are still fresh. Still raw. It will be nightfall, soon. The first night of Waning, when Alagai Ka is said to walk the night. I should be with my brothers, not hiding here amid the bones of true sharik.

  51

  WANING

  Micha is still with her niece and nephew when we return, keeping in perfect harmony with Rojvah’s singing even as she and Arick spar with spear and shield. She instructs as they go, and the twins hang on every word.

  I know how they feel. Even when she only showed a shadow of her true self, Micha was as much a mother to me as anyone. My own was always occupied. The first time I walked, Micha was there to support me. How could I not have seen that she was so much more?

  There’s nothing to mark the hours, or tell night from day, but sometime after we have feasted on fish roasted with honey and nuts, Darin cocks his head.

  I feel like a coiled asp with nothing to strike. “What do you hear?”

  “Fighting,” Darin says. “Shouts…” He shakes his head as if to clear it, tension lining his face. “Screaming. Shrieking. Pain.” He presses the heels of his hands to his temples as if to massage away a headache. “Shattering stone.” He covers his ears, flinching at sounds none of us can hear. “It’s too much. Can’t shut them out.”