“All they found were ruins half buried in the sand,” he had said in disgust. “Those, and the shell of a Kencyr temple.”
That last had surprised Jame. “What, one of the missing five?”
“Kothifir, Karkinaroth, Tai-tastigon…” Timmon had counted on his fingers.
“Tai-than, perhaps.” Jame wondered what Canden’s expedition had found. Trinity, how long ago it seemed since she and Dally had seen their friend off from Tai-tastigon’s walls.
“Kencyr prisoners at Urakarn claim to have sighted one there too,” Gorbel had said.
“At Urakarn, in the enemy camp?” That idea had truly startled Jame.
G’ah, too many mysteries, too few answers.
She now asked, “Do they say why this might be the last caravan?”
“No,” said Timmon with a grimace. “I’ve been among the drivers, buying them wine, listening for gossip, but they’re so scared this expedition will fail that there’s no loosening their tongues. King Krothen has enough wealth to last a lifetime—and to pay for his pet hobby, the Southern Host. He already has two treasure towers full of the finest trade silk. However, many merchants are gambling their fortunes and futures. It will be a hard time for Kothifir if this venture fails.”
Jame wondered if that was true for Gaudaric. His principal capital lay in his talent, but the mission must be important or he wouldn’t be sending his son-in-law.
Gorbel grunted. No doubt he had also tried to gather information, presumably without success. Jame could guess how hard his father must be pushing him.
“Will you take Bel-tairi with you, and that bloody rathorn?” he asked.
“I think not.” Other horses still made her uneasy, but she would rather risk riding them into the desert than her own unlikely pair. “Bel is too valuable—remember, she’s a Whinno-hir, hundreds if not thousands of years old—and Death’s-head burns too easily.”
“I had wondered,” said Timmon. “With those red eyes, he’s an albino, isn’t he?”
“Yes. A rathorn mare’s last foal often is, and an outcast too, poor boy. Others of his kind have black or gray coats, but still white manes, tails, and ivory. Speaking of which, in the desert he would not only have to carry all that weight but broil in it as well. I just hope I can get both of them to stay here.”
Gorbel gave a snort of laughter. “Still can’t manage the brutes, eh?”
“Bel, yes, and she’s a lady, I’ll thank you to remember, not a brute. Death’s-head, maybe. If she stays, though, he probably will too. Jorin goes with me.”
“Waugh,” said the ounce from under the table, as if in agreement. Jame rubbed his back with her foot.
“Ten more days,” Timmon said with a sigh, as if he were speaking of years. Jame wondered if he would be as enthusiastic deep in the desert.
As she left the canteen some time later, movement in the shadows to one side caught Jame’s attention. Her hand brushed her knife’s hilt, then drifted away. What should she fear here in the camp? Darkness resolved itself into Shade, muffled to the eyes in a cloak.
“Ran Awl has disappeared,” she said.
Jame felt her heart skip a beat, as if at the opening move of some dire game. “You’re sure?” Of course Shade was; she would have looked everywhere, questioned everyone. “What does Commander Frost say?”
“She suggests that, finding nothing wrong, Awl went home. But she wouldn’t without telling her staff. Without telling me.”
Jame recognized the tone. Bastard, half-Kendar daughter of a lord, shunned by most of her house, Shade had finally found someone to believe in, only to have her mentor disappear. Frost had only hinted at a cause. To be more explicit, especially if she knew better, would be the death of her honor. How much a Kencyr could get away with by simply not telling a direct lie. “It might be…perhaps…it seems…” G’ah. The bland smile, the easy evasion—was that all that honor had come to mean to her people?
Shade was watching her intently. She wants something from me; some validation, some protection…
The Randir opened her cloak at the neck. Within, golden scales shifted.
“Oh no,” said Jame, stepping back. “Every time I take Addy into my care, you go off and try to get yourself killed.” It suddenly occurred to her what Shade’s soul-image might be. For a nascent changer, what better than a snake with its supple, ever-changing form? “Truly, protect her and she will protect you.”
Shade considered this, then closed her cloak. “You understand more than I do, perhaps. So be it.”
She stepped back.
“Wait! Promise me that we’ll speak again before I leave.”
The other nodded and faded into the shadows.
The days passed, full of exercises and bustle as the senior randon prepared their juniors for the trials to come. Jame heard much of the desert’s threats and denizens, of sinksand and mirages, of hostile tribesmen and things beneath the sand, of thirst, hunger, and delirium. A lovely time they were all going to have, she thought, but still her spirits leaped at the thought.
Winter’s Eve arrived. Despite the farewell festivities held throughout the camp, Jame waited in her apartment for Shade, but the Randir didn’t appear.
Then it was Winter’s Day.
II
“Whoa there! Wait your turn!”
The caravan ground was chaos. Drivers jockeyed into their prescribed positions, surrounded by clusters of family and well-wishers with hands outstretched as if to hold them back. Horses neighed and stomped. Oxen bellowed. Donkeys brayed. Brass bands bounced about the margin of the field, playing discordant melodies. Dogs fought. Every form of transport seemed to crowd the field from wind carts to ten-mule teams, from high-riding buggies to wagons with wheels rimmed by inflated rhi-sar intestines. Perhaps only a third had risked the Wastes before and knew what to expect there. Among the veteran traders, all drove flat-bottomed wagons with upturned prows, drawn by horse teams that would be switched to something more appropriate when they reached the desert proper.
“My place is forward,” said Timmon to Jame. “See you tonight.”
As he rode off with his ten-command, Char followed with his own of Knorth third-years, shooting a glower at Jame in passing. As far as she knew, all challenges had stopped in the Knorth barracks with her order, as sourly as Char had received it. Ran Onyx-eyed hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other, but then how was anyone supposed to read that bland face? She was also with the caravan as second-in-command.
Jame saw Gaudaric standing by one of the flat-bottomed wagons while his daughter Evensong bade good-bye to her husband. As Ean mounted the vehicle, she retreated in tears to her father’s arms.
“Byrne?” the latter called, cradling her, craning to look over the mob. “Come help with your mother. Curse it, where is that boy?”
Jame’s ten-command took their assigned position a quarter of the way down the line of march, near Ean’s wagon. Evensong greeted her with near hysteria, reaching up to clutch her hand.
“You’ll take care of my beloved, won’t you? Promise!”
“There now.” Gaudaric patted her back. “I’m sure the lass has enough to manage already.” But his eyes pleaded, for the sake of his daughter.
“I promise,” said Jame, adding prudently, “to the extent that I can.”
“True, you’ve a challenging trek ahead. I went once, when I was young. Now it’s Ean’s turn. Don’t let the monotony of the desert seduce you into carelessness. It holds unexpected threats.”
Now he tells me?
He read her expression and slapped her rawboned bay on the shoulder, making the excited gelding hop sideways, nearly stepping on Jorin. The ounce crouched, sprang up onto the wagon, and burrowed under its tarpaulin, leaving only the white tip of his tail atwitch in the open. Something there caught his attention, but Jame was too busy to notice.
“Truly,” Gaudaric was saying, “I would have told you more if I could, but everything that happens in the Wastes lies under King Krothen’s oath of secrec
y. I haven’t even been able to tell my own son-in-law as much as I would have liked, although I’ve given him hints. Your seniors will have shared with you what they know. Note, though, that they are only allowed to travel with the caravan so far. If anything happens beyond that point, it’s no longer under your control, and precious little will be before that.”
The assistant wagon masters were shouting through trumpets, down the line. It was a big caravan—one hundred and fifty wagons carrying trade goods, water, food, fodder, and fuel. Each trader was expected to provide the latter four items for his own team and crew. The first lurched off down the southern road. Standing in her stirrups, Jame saw that it carried the middle-aged, blond seeker whom she had last seen during the raid on the small caravan during the summer. An old woman sat next to her on the high seat, rail-thin and white-haired. The other wagons followed one by one, like pulling out a skein of knobby yarn. Now Ean was maneuvering into position with many shouts at his team interspersed with farewells called to his wife.
Evensong collapsed against her father’s chest.
“Byrne!” he shouted, holding her, still scanning the turbulent crowd, now in motion. “Byrne!”
“Good-bye! Good-bye!” people cried, drowning him out.
The travelers passed through the South Gate, out between the fields, dust roiling up under thousands of hooves and wheels. Ahead rose the dusky mountains, and beyond that, as yet unseen, the open desert.
III
That first night, they camped halfway up the Apollynes, the terraced slopes stretching down behind them to the dark valley floor. Level with them were the distant lights of Kothifir, sparkling as if in imitation of the stars above. Some gazed longingly back. Most thought only of what lay ahead.
The next day they reached Icon Pass, with much scrambling up the steep road. This time the lights shone above them among the peaks where the fortress known as Mountain Station overlooked both flanks of the range. Snow crowned the heights and the air was frosty. Campfires blossomed beside the wagons. Jame and Timmon played a game of Gen in her tent before she turned him out, protesting, into the night.
On the third day the travelers crossed the pass. Horses leaned back on their hocks against the downward slope and the weight pressing close behind them. Stones rattled down the steep incline. Switchbacks helped for a while, then were left behind. Streams plunged past, fed by the beginning of the rainy season, and the sloping meadows were green. Goatherders watched them pass while edging their flocks out of reach, but the travelers still had plentiful supplies of their own and only laughed at such caution.
On the fourth day they continued to descend through the mountains’ southern foothills, then through date palm groves fed by the Apollynes’ largesse of streams. The desert itself enfolded them almost by stealth. The land flattened into a rock-studded plain with diminishing vegetation and waterways disappearing underground. The monotony Gaudaric had warned about lay on all sides, broken only by silently dancing dust devils and the occasional bush. It was much hotter by day, but when the sun set, the temperature dropped sharply. Jorin hunted by night, usually returning before daybreak with cold paws which he kneaded against Jame’s stomach, claws retracted, under their shared blanket. So it went for several days as the caravan followed the ancient, subterranean stream with its occasional, increasingly gritty wells and stands of dusty palm trees.
Riding behind Ean’s wagon, Jame noticed that it was dribbling water. When she called this to his attention, he untied the tarpaulin, threw it back, and discovered Byrne curled up in a snug hollow that he had made by partaking freely of their supplies. The water came from the wagon’s reserve tank which the boy had tapped and insufficiently closed, with the result that a quarter of it had drained away.
Ean clutched at his curly hair. “What am I going to do with you?” he demanded, distraught, of his young son. “Your mother must be frantic, and your grandfather too!”
“I’m here, Papa,” said the boy with implacable logic and a dimpled, self-satisfied smile. “Now you have to take me with you.”
Indeed, Ean had no choice. He couldn’t turn back himself, given what his father-in-law had staked on this expedition, and no one else would, however much he offered to pay them.
On the tenth day, they came to the last oasis, set in the dusty trading town of Sashwar on the edge of rolling sand dunes.
“How long do we stay here?” Jame asked.
“Long enough to prepare for the deep desert,” said Ean.
He extracted a pot from his load, broke the seal and began to smear its contents on the sloping front of his wagon.
“What’s that stuff?” asked Dar as the trader worked his way to the boards underneath. Byrne crawled after him, as usual getting in the way. Other veterans were performing similar work on their rigs, watched with amusement by the less-experienced drivers.
Ean held up a glistening glob. “I don’t know exactly. Gaudaric brought it back from the heart of the Wastes years ago on his one trip there, but it feels, smells, and tastes—ugh—like congealed fish oil.”
While he worked, Jame took Byrne to explore the town, such as it was. Her ten-command came too. A clutch of drivers whistled after pretty Mint, who made a flirtatious show of ignoring them.
Damson snorted.
“One of these days,” Jame said, “you’re going to get into trouble.”
“I like trouble,” said Mint, pouting, “the right sort, at least.”
At a primitive inn they ate fried locust on toast and goat cheese curds, washed down with bitter tea. Jame noted the women’s veils, reminiscent of the Kencyr Women’s World, and the men’s cheches, out of which tufts of hair poked like a furry fringe around their faces. She wondered if the latter were the ends of braids. Under her own head covering, her hair was also tightly woven Merikit style, those strands on the left side for men she had killed, those on the right for children she had supposedly sired as the Earth Wife’s male Favorite. Did the desert tribes follow a similar code? Whom did they worship anyway? The Four or their desert equivalents? Urakarn’s Dark Prophet or the Witch King of Nekrien? There were even rumors of a tribe sworn to the Three-Faced God, rather to the embarrassment of his Kencyr followers who would hardly have wished him (or her, or it) on anyone else.
After dinner, they went to inspect the extensive animal pens. The horses would be left here tomorrow, giving way to beasts better suited to the deep desert. The selection was wide, ranging from giant armadillos to hyenas the size of ponies to burly, long-legged woms to web-footed birds at least eight feet high at the shoulder.
“Which are ours?” asked Byrne, poking at the hyenas with a stick. Brier snatched him back barely before the powerful snap of jaws.
“I don’t know,” said Jame. “Hopefully not those.”
Dawn came with a vivid smear of color across an endless horizon. To the southeast and southwest floated the mirages of distant mountains—the Tenebre Range and the Uraks respectively.
Ean had unloaded his wagon the day before. Now the wheels and axles were removed, reducing it to a sledge. The goods were reloaded. Out of the growing light came two handlers leading a pair of huge beasts, some ten feet in length with correspondingly long legs and necks.
“Lambas,” said Ean, pleased. “Gaudaric reserved a team of them for us by courier.”
Jame noted their splayed, three-toed feet but even more their short, prehensile trunks. Fur-fringed, slit nostrils opened on either side of the latter, situated on the tops of their small heads. Their bodies, by contrast, seemed swollen.
“They have three stomachs,” she was told. “The biggest one stores up to thirty gallons of water.”
“So what do we ride?” asked Dar. “Oh no.”
Brier had appeared out of the growing light, leading a flock of reddish-brown birds that towered over her.
“Moas,” she said, “good to ride or to eat, if things get rough. Watch out for their teeth; they’re omnivores and have a nasty bite. And make sure the girths are
tight.”
Each had a saddle on its back, secured around the rib cage before the long legs. Jame reached up to tug on a strap. The bird squawked in protest and snapped at her. She punched it in the beak.
“Now make them kneel.”
“How?”
“Kick them in the knee, of course.”
Jame gingerly nudged her bird. It folded with a glare and a whistling hiss, bringing the saddle within reach. She stepped on its leg and swung her own over its back. It rose with a forward jolt that nearly dislodged her.
“All right,” she murmured as its head bobbed high above her own on its long stalk of a neck. “Your name is Lurcher, and don’t you dare throw me off.”
The caravan set forth. First went the sledge, formerly the wagon, that carried the seekers. It dragged roughly to begin with, but when it hit the sand it began to slide. A skin of water formed under it where the fish oil met the sand and a remnant of the old sea returned. The next sledge deepened the effect and so on. When Ean’s vehicle joined the line, it skimmed forward behind the lambas who walked on either side of the shallow, watery pathway. The other traders followed, lumbering through the drifts, their laughter dying.
Riding a moas wasn’t too different than riding a horse, if one discounted the loss of two feet and the distance to the ground. Lurcher had a tendency to sway, perhaps because it had drunken half its own weight at the oasis and so was a bit top-heavy. Jame surged back and forth from stirrup to stirrup, glad (not for the first time) that she didn’t tend toward seasickness.
Jorin crouched and sprang up on the sledge where Byrne greeted him with a crow of delight. Trust a cat to spare its paws on the hot ground.
Soon they were deep in the rolling golden sand dunes under an achingly blue sky. For the most part, they tried to follow the dips that exposed the hard desert floor, but often they had to climb over the dunes’ shoulders. The lambas plodded steadily ahead, occasionally hooting companionably from team to team:
Are you still there? Yes I am. Are you?
Other beasts were soon struggling and falling behind. Most caught up that night, but late and exhausted. Some had already turned back.
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