Land of the Burning Sands

by Rachel Neumeier

  He did not head south nor straight east toward the river. Those were the ways the people of Melentser had gone, and above all he did not want to walk up on the heels of any refugees from the city. He walked north and east instead, toward the unpeopled mountains. His greatest fear seemed unfounded: The geas did not stop him choosing his own direction. He could tell that it was still alive, but it was not active. He felt no pull from it at all.

  Casmantium did not claim the country to the north, the mountains beyond the desert—no one claimed that land. Rugged and barren, snow capped and dragon haunted, men did not find enough of value in the great mountains to draw them into the far north. But a single determined man might make his way quietly through those mountains, meeting no men and disturbing no sleeping monsters, all two hundred miles or more to the border Casmantium shared with Feierabiand. The cold magecraft that shaped geas bonds was not a discipline of gentle Feierabiand: When a geas-bound man crossed into that other country, the geas should… not merely break. It should vanish. It should be as though it had never been set.

  Or so Warichteier said, and Fenescheiren’s Analects agreed. Gereint was very interested in testing that claim.

  Maps suggested that the foothills of the mountains should be little more than forty miles from Melentser. On a good road in fair weather, a strong man should be able to walk that far in one night. Two at the outside. Across trackless sand, through pounding heat… three, perhaps? Four? Surely not more than four. How far did the desert now extend around Melentser? All the way to those foothills? He had planned for each skin of water to last for one whole night and day. Now, surrounded by the lingering heat, he suspected that they might not last so long.

  While in the ruins of the city, he found it impossible to walk a straight line for any distance: Not only did the streets twist about, but sometimes they were blocked by fallen rubble or by stark red cliffs. Then Gereint had to pick his way through the fallen brick and timbers, or else find a way around, or sometimes actually double back and find a different route through the ruins of the city. He could not go quickly even when the road was clear; there was not enough light. Yet he did not dare light a candle for fear of the attention its glow might draw.

  So it took a long time to get out of Melentser; a long time to clamber over and around one last pile of rubble and find himself outside the city walls. A distance that should have taken no more than two hours had required three times that, and how long were the nights at this time of year? Not long, not yet. They were nowhere close to the lengthening nights of autumn. How quickly would the heat mount when the sun rose? Gereint studied the constellations once more, took a deep breath of the dry air, drank a mouthful of water, and walked into the desert.

  The stars moved across the sky; the thin moon drew a high arc among them. The arrowhead in the constellation of the Bow showed Gereint true east. He set his course well north of east and walked fast. The night had never grown cool. There was a breeze, but it was hot and blew grit against his face. Sometimes he walked with his eyes closed. It was so dark that this made little difference.

  Already tired, he found that the heat rising from the sand seemed to lay a glaze across his mind, so that he walked much of the time in a half-blind trance. Twisted pillars and tilted walls of stone sometimes barred his way. Twice, he almost walked straight into such a wall. Each time he was warned at the last moment by the heat radiating into the dark from the stone. Each time he fought himself alert, turned well out of his way to clear the barrier, and then looked for the Bow again. Usually the ground was level, but once, after Gereint had been walking for a long time, he stumbled over rough ground and fell to his knees; the shock woke him from a blank stupor and, blinking at the sky, he realized he had let himself turn west of north, straight into the deep desert. He had no idea how long he had been walking the wrong way.

  Then he realized that he could see a tracery of rose gray in the east. And then he realized that he was carrying a waterskin in his hand, and that it was empty. It had not even lasted one entire night.

  The sun rose quickly, surely peeking over the horizon more quickly than it would have in a more reasonable land. Its first strong rays ran across the desert sands and fell across Gereint, and as they did, he felt the geas bond to Perech Fellesteden fail. It snapped all at once, like the links of a chain finally parting under relentless strain. Gereint staggered. Stood still for a moment, incredulous joy running through him like fire.

  Then the sun came fully above the horizon, and Gereint immediately discovered that he’d been wrong to believe the desert hot at night. Out here in the open, the power of the sun was overwhelming. Unimaginable. No wonder the sunlight had broken the geas; Gereint could well believe the sun’s power might melt any ordinary human magic. Once well up in the sky, the sun seemed smaller and yet far more fierce than any sun he’d ever known; the sky was a strange metallic shade: not blue, not exactly white. The very light that blazed down around him was implacably hostile to men and all their works. Indeed, hostility was layered all through this desert. It was not an ordinary desert, but a country of fire and stone where nothing of the gentler earth was meant to live. The great poet Anweierchen had written, “The desert is a garden that blooms with time and silence.” Gereint would not have called it a garden of any kind. It was a place of death, and it wanted him to die.

  He had hoped he might be able to walk for some of the morning. But, faced with the hammer-fierce sun, he did not even try. He went instead to the nearest red cliff and flung himself down in its shade.

  The day was unendurable. Gereint endured it only because he had no other option. As the sun moved through its slow arc, he moved with it, shifting around the great twisting pillar of stone to stay in its shade. But even in the shade, heat radiated from the sand underfoot and blazed from the stone. He could not lie down, for the heat from the ground drove him up; he sat instead and bowed his head against his knees. The sleep he managed was more like short periods of unconsciousness; the twin torments of heat and thirst woke him again and again.

  He stayed as far from the stone as he could get and yet remain in its shade, but the short shadows of midday drove him within an arm’s length of the cliff and then he thought he might simply bake like bread in an oven. The occasional breeze of the night was gone; the air hung heavy and still, very much as it must within an oven. If there were griffins, Gereint did not see them. He saw something else, once, or thought he did: a trio of long-necked animals, like deer, with pelts of gold and long black scimitar horns that flickered with fire. They ran lightly across the sand near him, flames blooming from the ground where their hooves struck the sand. As they came upon Gereint, the deer paused and turned their heads, gazing at him from huge molten eyes, as though utterly amazed to find a human man in their fiery desert. As well they might be, he supposed.

  Then the deer startled, enormous ears tilting in response to some sound Gereint could not hear, and flung themselves away in long urgent leaps. They left behind only little tongues of fire dancing in their hoof prints.

  But perhaps he only hallucinated the flames. Or the deer. The heat was surely sufficiently intense to create hallucinations. Though he would rather have seen a vision of a quiet lake where graceful willows trailed their leaves…

  He could not eat. The thought of food nauseated him. But Gereint longed for water. His lips had already cracked and swollen. Berentser Gereimarn, poet and natural philosopher, had written that, in a desert, the best place to carry water was in the body; that if a man tried to ration his water, he would weaken himself while the water simply evaporated right from the waterskin and was lost entirely. Gereint wanted very badly to believe this. That would give him every reason to drink all the water in his second waterskin. But Gereimarn had been a better poet than philosopher: His assertions were often unreliable. And the thought of emptying yet another skin of water in his first day, of being trapped in the desert with no water left, was terrifying. Gereint measured the slow movement of the sun and allow
ed himself three mouthfuls every hour.

  Even at midsummer, even in the desert, the sun did have to retreat eventually. Shadows lengthened. The hammering heat eased—not enough, never enough. But it eased. Gereint got to his feet before the sun was quite down and walked away from the stone that had, all day, both sheltered and threatened to kill him. He walked quickly, because now that the heat was not so desperately unendurable, what he really wanted to do was collapse into an exhausted sleep. But if he did that, if he did not use every possible hour for walking, he knew he would never reach the end of the desert.

  How long had he estimated for a man to walk forty miles? Fifty, if he could not keep a straight course? He worked out the sums again laboriously in his head. He felt he was trying to think with a mind as thick and slow as molasses, but it helped him stay awake enough to keep his direction clear. He worked the sums a second time, doubting his conclusion, and then a third. How quickly was he walking? Not fast, not once his first burst of speed had been exhausted. Not four miles an hour. As fast as two? That would make it sixteen miles in eight hours. Sixteen? Yes, of course, sixteen. Or if he managed three miles in an hour, wouldn’t that be… twenty-four miles? That would surely take him clear of the desert by dawn. Wait, were the nights eight hours long at this time of year? He should know the answer to that… Anyone would know that… He could not remember. If he could get to the mountains by morning… He had to. How fast was he walking?

  Gereint stopped, sat down, and finished all the water in the second skin and half the water in the third. He made himself eat some of the cracker and dried beef. He had lived through one day in the desert; he doubted he would survive another. So he needed to walk fast and not let himself fall into a heat-induced trance, and to walk fast he needed strength.

  He did feel stronger when he got back to his feet. He found the arrow’s head in the Bow and set his direction. Then he counted his steps. He allowed himself a mouthful of water every two hundred steps. He counted in a rhythm to keep himself from slowing down. When he stumbled and caught himself and realized he’d once again been walking in a daze, he began to count by threes. Then by sevens. Then backward from five thousand, by elevens. He told himself that if he lost count, he’d have to start over and forfeit his mouthful of water. That self-imposed threat helped him keep alert.

  He finished the third skin of water and began on the fourth. He tried to suck on a pebble, but the pebbles of this desert neither felt nor tasted right in his mouth; they tasted of heat and hot copper and fire. He spat one out quickly, drank an extra mouthful of water, and tried to fix his thoughts on the northern mountains. There would be streams running down from the heights; it might be raining. He could hardly imagine rain.

  It crossed his mind that it might be raining in the south. Perech Fellesteden had intended to take his family all the way south to the luxurious southern city of Abreichan: He had property there. Well, Fellesteden had property everywhere, but his holdings in Abreichan were among the largest.

  If Gereint had gone with his master, he would be in the south. Maybe walking through the rain. But… he would still be with Perech Fellesteden.

  Lifting a hand, Gereint traced the brand on his face with the ball of his thumb. Traced it again. Lowered his hand and lengthened his stride.

  It occurred to him some time later that the ground was tending somewhat upward.

  Then the sun sent its first deceptively gentle rose glow above the eastern horizon.

  Gereint stopped and waited, straining his eyes for the first glimpse ahead of the mountains. He felt he was poised at the tip of a moment; that though the sun was rising, time was not actually passing; that the whole desert waited with him for the answer to the question of time and distance.

  Then the sun rose, blazing. Heat slammed down across the desert like a smith’s hammer on a glowing anvil. Ahead of him, dim in the distance, Gereint saw the first high foothills that led up to the great mountains. As far as he could see, the hills were red with fiery sand. Heat shimmered across them.

  Gereint stared at the hills for a long moment. Then he laughed—it was not much of a laugh, but he meant to laugh. He drank the rest of the water in the fourth skin in one draught. Then he threw the skin aside and strode forward, straight into the teeth of the sun.

  That burst of defiance lasted only very few minutes. Then, from striding, Gereint found himself suddenly on his hands and knees, with no memory of falling. For a moment he thought he might simply lie down and let the heat finish killing him. But the desert was too profoundly inimical; he could not bring himself simply to give way to it. He crawled instead into the shadow of a narrow bladelike spire that pierced the hot air and collapsed in its meager protection. Red heat beat up through him from the sand and closed down around him from the air, but he did not know it.

  He woke in cool mist, surrounded by green light that filtered through branches dripping with water. A blanket guarded him from falling drops. A fire crackled an arm’s length away, its tiny warmth a comfort rather than a threat. He was not thirsty. In fact, he felt a languid sense of well-being that at first was too foreign to recognize. Fragrant steam rose from a pot on the fire… Soup, he recognized eventually. The recognition drifted through the languor without urgency.

  “Are you hungry?” a voice asked.

  Gereint thought about this question. He did not quite know the answer, nor did it seem important. The voice was unfamiliar. A faint uneasiness made its way through the clinging vagueness.

  “Can you sit up?” the voice asked him. “Come, now. Try.”

  Gereint did try, the uneasiness biting more sharply. He found himself weak, but less so than he had expected. A hand on his shoulder supported his effort… He turned his head, trying to focus his gaze on the owner of that hand. His vision faded oddly in and out.

  “That will pass,” the voice reassured him. “You need food; that’ll get you back in proper order. Can you hold this mug? Try. Drink.”

  Gereint closed his eyes and sipped. It was a rich broth, thick with bits of meat, not beef… not mutton… venison, maybe. He drank the broth and found his attention sharpening, the languor receding. Strength seemed to pour outward from his belly through all his limbs. A recollection of the desert came back to him, the long walk and the final glimpse of the red desert going right up into the distant hills. The memory was vivid and yet seemed somehow long ago. It held little horror, and no terror.

  Then he remembered the reason he had walked into the desert, and terror went through him like the crack of a whip. He put the mug down sharply—the handle broke off in his hand, he was dimly aware—and looked for his… benefactor.

  The man wore the sort of good, tough, well-made clothing that any ordinarily prosperous man might wear for traveling, though the ring on his left hand looked more than ordinarily valuable. He was plump, round faced, older than Gereint… maybe in his fifties. Not tall. Not intimidating. He even looked kind, for what little that impression might be worth. But he was not meeting Gereint’s eyes.

  Then he did. And that was worse. There was a knowledge in that gaze that Gereint had desperately hoped he would never see again.

  Gereint tossed the blanket back, got to his feet, and stared down at his own bare feet. His boots were gone. Fellesteden’s little silver chains were no longer woven through the steel rings that pierced his ankles between bone and tendon. Instead, each ring was woven through by a neat little cord.

  This was not exactly a surprise. Gereint had not needed to see those cords to feel the renewed bite of the geas. He lifted his gaze again, slowly.

  The other man looked nervous, as a man might who was alone in the mountains with another, stronger man of dubious character and temper. But he also looked self-assured. He didn’t seem wealthy enough to have owned geas-bound… servants. Even so, Gereint was sure the man knew exactly what he’d done with those cords.

  Gereint made his voice soft. An easy, quiet voice. Not defiant, not angry, not frightened. Just… soft. Coaxing.
“Let me go. You’re kind… I can see that. There’s no risk to you in letting me go. You don’t even need to cut those cords. You can just tell me to walk away, not to come back. And I will. I promise you, that’s all I want: a chance to walk away into the mountains…”

  “Be quiet,” said the man.

  So he wasn’t intimately familiar with the limits of the geas after all. That was, on the whole, rather more reassuring than not. Gereint did not point out his mistake, but obediently shut his mouth and waited.

  “Kneel,” ordered the man.

  Gereint dropped immediately to his knees, not waiting for the bite of the geas to enforce the command. He bowed his head, though his new master hadn’t commanded that. They had to try their power; it meant nothing. There was no reason to take it personally. It was what they did later that mattered, after they discovered they could do anything.

  “All right,” said the man. “Get up.”

  He sounded uneasy, which might be good… or otherwise. Some of the worst masters were the ones who felt guilty about the power they held over you. A man like this, prosperous but not noble, might well be one of that sort. Gereint got to his feet. Glancing covertly at his master, he said gently, “You don’t need to do this, honored sir. It’s not required. You can simply command me to walk away.”

  The man looked uncomfortable, but he shook his head. “I need you, you see. My—my companion died, in the desert. And then my poor burro… You were really much too heavy for her.” He glanced regretfully at the pot simmering over the fire, a glance that suggested the final fate of the burro. “Everything was so much more difficult than I expected…”

  Gereint could believe that, at least. He said softly, even knowing the effort was hopeless, “I’ll help you with anything you need, sir. You saved my life, didn’t you? You don’t need the geas, I promise you. Or I’ll help you now, and then, later, all you need to do is tell me to walk away…”