Dreams of the Compass Rose
Page 29
In the previous days, before Egiras had become withdrawn thus, she would demand from them lively conversation, storytelling, singing of songs and retelling of court gossip. She would not allow them to rest. The handmaidens serving the Princess would be tense and fearful, ready to amuse her in any way in order to avoid quick punishment.
So who would have thought that it would come to this? They merely sat in their suspended chairs and embroidered with silk, or strung translucent glass beads in intricate arrangements upon fine cloth.
Egiras sat alone and motionless, her small pale hands held in her lap. There were no jeweled bands upon her wrists nor rings on her swan-delicate fingers, for she had demanded none, and the handmaidens never bothered with these details now that their mistress did not seem to care. At many points in the day, as the sun traversed the pale celestial dome, the strange man they knew as Lord Nadir would pace his horse to walk near the swaying chair of the Princess Egiras and he would speak softly in greeting, then draw the curtains apart to make sure Egiras was well.
“Should we stop to rest, my Lady?” he would ask.
But for the most part she would not even turn her face to him, and only the tensing of her form would tell him that she knew he spoke.
Sometimes she would barely shake her head in response. He would then leave her be, and close the curtain between them.
At other times Egiras replied to him, her voice barely audible above the wind. “We go on . . .” she spoke. “Keep going.”
It was at such times that Nadir would hear grumbling voices. When he turned to look, the servants would grow silent and withdraw behind the pack beasts. And then there would be strained silence in the caravan until the next nightfall when they stopped. Such was the routine.
Until one morning the caravan woke up to a dull sky, and the dawn was obscured in a slate haze, while the wind sang louder than normal, in tumult. They proceeded to move onward, but with caution.
* * *
“Look at the horizon, Lord Nadir!” exclaimed a guard, riding back from up ahead to pause at my side. “See how blurred it is, and there is no line of sight between land and sky. A storm lies before us. This is a big one, and it will stir up the sands into a frenzy. We must stop and wait it out, or else we risk harm!”
I squinted and drew my hand over my brow as I stared East, blinking away the involuntary tearing in my eyes due to excessive dust. I looked back at the man, knowing him to be relatively trustworthy, and then I nodded. “I can see it. We’ll stop, Patriq.”
We became motionless, scanning the panorama of the desert around us, while the cooler wind of this overcast morning scraped our cheeks with granules of sand, made the ends of our cotton head-wraps flap uncontrollably, and billowed our travel robes. I searched for any landmark, any sign of difference in the sands, such as an oasis or even meager shrubs—anything that would anchor us better in this desolation. Nothing.
Resigned, I signaled with my hand and the caravan slowed, while the drivers and guards came to me, knowing without being told why we were stopping this time. I spoke curtly and loudly above the wind, which was howling stronger with each moment. My voice rose above the clamor and became commanding. Rarely had I used this voice before, having learned it a long time ago in the days of my warrior training. I told them to move the three wagons together to form an outer circle, and to bring the beasts around and allow them to crouch close together. The larger camels were to be on the outside, and the lesser pack-beasts in the middle. All were to remain laden, for the additional weight of their burdens would help them stay immobile against the wind. In the very middle we ourselves would huddle, the guards and servants on the outside, the women in the middle, with the Princess Egiras at the very heart of us. Like solid veils, our human bodies would protect her.
Thus we would weather the storm.
As the household hurried to prepare for the ordeal, I dismounted also and, being taller than all and of greater strength than the guards, helped them disassemble the curtained chairs and fold and carry them to the wagons for safety. I then bodily carried the Princess Egiras to the center of our makeshift fortress, placed her upon a rug, and covered her like a child with additional cloaks and blankets. For a moment her slender fingers wrapped around my neck, and I felt her grasping me in terror, while her shadow eyes remained wide underneath the transparent veil that covered her face. In that instant of intensity, I almost thought she was staring at me, that the wildness in her eyes was visual comprehension.
And then I saw Yaro, quick as mercury at my side, as she brought more bundles of blankets and bedding, and together with the handmaidens and the other women servants she helped to arrange a tent over everyone’s heads.
But then, instead of huddling closer with the women, Yaro dashed out of the tent like a madwoman, wind ripping at her poor clothing, and made her way toward one of the wagons.
“Yaro!” I cried. “Come back! Where are you going?”
“My mother!” she cried, without turning around. “She is in the wagon!”
I growled in anger, in sudden understanding of the inevitability of her actions, and then at the inevitability of my own actions that would follow. I was furious at myself that I had forgotten about the old woman even for a moment.
And so I went after her.
For the first time in these endless years, I was leaving the Princess in a moment of danger. That thought danced through my consciousness, flickering past the gale-level noise of the wind around us, as the edges of the storm came upon the caravan.
What am I doing?
But the answer did not come to me, not while my attention was upon the details of the wagon just ahead of me, only steps away past the backs of the huddled camels. The air had grown dark, obscuring the faint sky altogether, and wind saturated with sand whipped angrily into my squinting eyes as I tore forward, seeing nothing but the thin woman’s black limbs as she rummaged in the wagon, pulling up a lifeless bundle that looked like a sack but turned out to be the limp figure of an ancient woman.
Another second and I was at her side and taking over her light burden. I carried her mother back toward our tent, each step like quicksand through the thickness of wind, while Yaro came behind me and tried in her own way to help by holding a shawl against our faces as we walked. Seconds stretched like days, and then we had reached the grouping where the household had gathered in and around the small tent, making a mass of burlap and cotton and swaddled bodies against the sand and wind. My Princess Egiras was inside.
I dropped on my knees before the tent, and, since there was no place within because all the womenfolk had been piled there, I placed the old woman down against the canvas and cotton blankets just at the edge. The blankets were already half-buried with airborne sand, but they were better than nothing. I turned around and grabbed Yaro’s thin limbs and pulled her forcibly nearer to her mother, placing my great form against them both, shielding them like a wall. Yaro struggled for an instant in surprise, but almost immediately went limp, for I was a giant compared to her, and besides she knew I was helping. And then, because the storm was now fully on us, even I was barely able to move despite my strength as I pulled up and drew with both hands a flapping blanket around us. With it I covered our three heads tight, swaddling us up to the necks in protective darkness and leaving only a small pocket of air so that we could breathe. And then I was falling motionless in the sand on top of them both. While the maelstrom closed upon us with a sound that filled the whole world, I remembered another moment, this one a long time ago.
With a pang it came to me, the memory of myself as a small angry boy huddled over a young girl—her facial features forgotten now, a pallid blur except for her bright persimmon hair
—Caelqua, my sister, and an old swarthy woman, my beloved grandmother whom I was later to know as Ris. . . .
And for the second time in my life we lay dying in the desert.
* * *
Yaro gasped, and her mind came flying back into her, or so it s
eemed. At some point during the storm she had lost consciousness, and had dreamed. Weightless, she wandered somewhere up high, as high as the clouds and oddly above the body of the storm. From her immortal’s vantage point the world was a vista of cotton shades of monochrome. She saw the sun bright and unobscured searing from above—so unlike what it normally was in her poor vision—and underneath was the grey tumult of the sandstorm and the overcast haze of the desert. A milky dream; nothing but a heady vertigo.
The cloth of the blanket was choking her, and she felt other limbs and bodies around her, and the pressing of sand.
There was also a strange silence.
Yes, it was that very silence that had brought her spirit back into her body, for the wind had died down and the sand granules rolled softly around her like strange warm water. Yaro fumbled with the cloth around her face, moving slowly under the weight of sand, and then dug upwards, knowing the direction by instinct. Next to her she felt the movement of another body, and even closer she knew must be the skeletal form of her old mother. Yaro dug fiercely, and then pulled the blanket away and was free.
Overhead, the sky burned. There was no sign of the storm-laden skies, and all around her the desert was smooth like barely rippling sand water. She had surfaced into desolation. The realization of this utter solitude exploded within her. She reacted, digging wildly around her, feeling with her lower body the bodies of others nearby. The sand went flying, and then just as quickly rolled back down upon her in a million granules even as she swept it away. And yet she managed to free the head and upper torso of the frail old woman, her mother. The old one still breathed, thanks to the protective covering of the blanket around her face, and was coughing weakly, unable to speak.
“I will get you water, mother. Don’t be afraid!” whispered Yaro in a parched voice. The old woman nodded at her, then closed her eyes.
Yaro coughed and then, flailing, continued to dig in a wide circumference around her. Just behind them had been the tent with the mistress and her serving women, and nearby were all the rest. Off to the side somewhere were the camels and the wagons. And within were the precious sacks that held the caravan’s water supply.
What a storm it had been that everything was covered up!
At that moment there was movement in the sand around her in several places, like the popping-bubble surface of a stew slowly beginning to boil. Others had come alive, one by one, and were attempting to extricate themselves also. Then from everywhere came the muffled braying of camels and the powerful snorts of other pack beasts as they dug themselves out, reaching up for air.
The sands shuddered very close, just behind Yaro, and Nadir’s head emerged, blinking and snorting, and then the rest of him as he began to dig violently in the morass.
“Yaro!” he gasped. “Are you unharmed? Egiras!” And then he looked behind them to the place where the womenfolk had been confined by the sand and where there was now only a lump of smoothness.
Nadir freed himself and then began to work on freeing the Princess. He set to work digging up the area over the small tent, and soon others came wading through the sand to help. There were several of the guards, including their overseer, Patriq, who now gasped and spat sand and shook his beard free of the granules as he moved to Nadir’s side.
“Dig here,” said Nadir, breathing laboriously from the exertion. “This is the place.”
“Gods help us . . .” muttered Patriq. “This is a nearly impossible task, for the sands are like ever-encroaching waves. The more we throw off, the more they roll back down upon us. . . .”
“So talk less and dig more!” said Yaro sharply as she crawled toward the place where she last remembered seeing the wagons.
“Who is this woman with the tongue of an asp?” grumbled Patriq. “Is she not a servant of yours, my Lord Nadir?”
“I’ll show you an asp!” cried Yaro, glancing over her shoulders and giving the man an incinerating glare while she crawled and pulled at the sands, digging in up to her elbows. “You just wait till I come back with a water skin, you’ll feel it against your thick skull! If I can dig up a wagon, then surely you can dig up a tent!”
“Your mouth can indeed dig up a wagon, shrill wench!” cried Patriq, and then dug with his hands into the sand fiercely, making a deliberate show of ignoring her. At that moment Nadir exclaimed that he had found the tent, and two men came immediately to his side. They battled the sand, having taken off their shirts and head-wraps and scooping it with the cotton. Finally they were met by feeble movement below, as the serving women beneath the canvas struggled to free themselves and their mistress.
Nadir pulled up the tent fabric and saw the familiar form of Egiras wrapped like an onion in blankets and coverings. At her side two young handmaidens sputtered and sneezed, and next to them other women servants wallowed and shook the dust and white powder out of their clothing. Everyone was unharmed, for the thick canvas had served them well, creating a pocket of air in which they had lain for the duration of the storm, and very little sand had come inside. But the Princess herself remained motionless.
Something cold swept over Nadir as he stared at her swaddled figure. And then he saw the light movement of her, the movement of breath. He leaned forward and spoke urgently,
“Egiras!” while he moved the coverings and veils away from her face. She lay with her eyes closed, short dark lashes of great thickness resting against her yellowish skin. She breathed just barely, like a drugged sleeper. And yet, with the first touch of warm air and sun upon her face, her eyes came open slowly, black and slanted, and then she blinked the glare away.
“Nadir . . .” she whispered, staring up into his eyes. “Are we dead? Is this the land of the dead?”
“Oh no, my Lady,” said one of her handmaidens. “We have merely come forth from the storm that covered us with a mountain of sand.”
“I see you are well, my Princess,” said Nadir softly, smiling. “Then all is well. . . .”
Egiras sat up, and her women brushed the dusting of sand from her glossy blackness of hair.
“Oh, what shall we do?” wailed one of the servants, taking this opportunity to begin a rant.
“The whole caravan is buried!”
“It was indeed a great sandstorm, the greatest I’ve lived through,” whispered a guard. Nadir ignored them.
“Now you must forgive me, Princess Egiras,” he said, rising, “but I must leave your side yet again as we dig up the rest of our things, and the animals.”
And then it suddenly occurred to him, and he froze. “Egiras,” he said, his eyes intense upon her. “Can you see me?”
“Yes.”
She spoke very lightly, and she stared back at him with her clear, suddenly familiar gaze. There was reason and understanding in her face.
“Gods be praised!” exclaimed a servant. “The Princess can see again!”
And at that point Yaro made her way toward them by scrambling and crawling through the sandy morass, dragging along with her a large water sack. Uncapping the stopper, she drew its neck forward and offered it to Egiras.
“Drink, my Lady, and then all the rest of you,” she said breathlessly. “The desert saps away your life-water invisibly, and you must replenish it now.”
Egiras slowly turned her face and looked directly at Yaro.
Yaro froze. The moment stretched and became immense and burning, like the heat of the sun, while sweat beaded on Yaro’s brow.
But Egiras did not say anything, merely took the heavy water skin. She leaned forward and put her lips to the neck to drink several swallows. When done, she moved back with a trickle of water on her lips. Only then did she speak.
“Yaro. . . .”
That, and nothing else. Her fathomless black eyes remained impassive. Then Egiras looked away and wiped her lips with her hand. Her fingers lingered on the skin of her own face, outlining her cheek with possibly a tactile memory—one of masks and moons. She said softly, “I have drunk. Now, the rest of you, drink.”
Yaro removed from the folds of clothing at her chest a small flask, which she had refilled in secret just moments ago, before she had brought the large water skin to them all.
“Mother,” Yaro whispered hoarsely, putting her hand over the old woman’s forehead.
“Here, drink!”
The old woman gasped at the touch. The flask was put to her lips and she swallowed weakly, then pulled away. “You drink . . .” she croaked.
“I already have,” Yaro lied.
“No, drink!” said the old one. And so Yaro took a couple of swallows, feeling the coolness go down her throat like balm, before stopping up the precious flask once again. In the meantime, the desert was warming up.
The sun rode near zenith as the guards and servants labored to dig up their belongings and the wagons, to reclaim what was theirs from the clutches of the desert. Air began to warp with radiant heat, and sweat rapidly escaped from the skin, evaporating and leaving in its wake slow, parched exhaustion.
They had managed to clear away two of the wagons while the third still lay partially buried.
“We are wasting a precious day of water allocation and precious sweat. The gods must be willing for us to perish here in this merciless hell . . .” grumbled the servants and the guards, but mostly out of Nadir’s earshot. Dark tired looks were thrown his way. But, seeing that Nadir toiled as hard as if not harder than any two men, their grumblings mostly died unspoken. They paused to rest while the sun shone with its greatest fierceness. A couple of swallows each of water was given to the lesser pack-beasts, which huddled together, but not to the camels, who could do without for longer. The rest of the water sack was passed around and consumed by the humans.