Land of the Burning Sands

by Rachel Neumeier

  “We expected a little political maneuvering, a temporary embarrassment, shall we say? But it is clear now that the griffins intend to force their way to a stronger, more decisive victory than we imagined. I think, now, that they intended this from the first.” The mage nodded toward the desert, where golden flames flickered across red sand and the fierce sun glared down out of a metallic sky. “We gave them Melentser and the surrounding country. The griffins said they did not desire vengeance, that they would be content to have Melentser as their indemnity. But they are treacherous creatures. We did not expect—how could we?—that the griffins would drive their desert so far east, or use their new foothold in our country to strike against Casmantium’s very life. It did not occur to us that they could, or perhaps it did not occur to us—even to me, though I, of us all, should have suspected it—that they would realize their own advantage and press it home.”

  “So you came here,” Gereint said quietly. “You alone. Except for me.”

  Beguchren moved his shoulders, not quite a shrug. “I would do anything to redeem our mistake.” He glanced up, meeting Gereint’s eyes. “I would certainly sacrifice one maker. One skilled, strongly gifted maker; the sort of maker who already has a thread of magecraft running unrecognized through his mind and soul and gift. That sort of maker might do for me what must be done.” He paused. Then he went on, deliberately, “It was not your mistake, Gereint. But I am compelled to ask you to help me repair it.”

  Gereint met his eyes. “But you can’t force me to help you,” he said. It was not quite a question.

  Beguchren bowed his head again. “If the geas, if any part of magecraft, could force you to answer my need, I would use it. As it happens, nothing I know can compel you to the… immolation and remaking of the self that is necessary.”

  “Save voluntary self-abnegation.” Gereint tried to keep to the same deliberate tone, with how much success he could not tell.

  Beguchren inclined his head. “Just so. But not today.” He rose, glanced once more across the hillside to the burning sands of the desert, and then stepped instead toward his horse.

  Gereint also got to his feet, took one step across the mat of tangled flowers, and called after him, “Why not today?”

  The mage stopped and swung around. For nearly the first time in Gereint’s experience, he seemed surprised. He began to speak, hesitated, and said at last, visibly choosing his words, “The, ah, appropriate circumstances are not yet properly arranged. I dare not act until I have done everything possible to ensure success. But hold to this image”—he nodded toward the desert, beautiful and terrible and utterly foreign to the country of men—“and when the day comes at last down to the hour, I hope you will ask that question again.”

  The ride back to Eben Amnachudran’s house was very silent and not nearly long enough to suit Gereint, who would have liked a good deal more time to think through everything Beguchren had told him. They had seemed to Gereint to stay a long time looking at the desert, to sit a long time on the gray rocks. But the sun was still high above the western horizon when they came back through the orchard and into the courtyard. Here in the country of men, the sun seemed only a little too large and too fierce as it dropped slowly toward the western horizon. Clouds stretched in crimson bands across a deep azure sky; the tawny hills rolled out below, with the distant mountains a ruddy gold above. It was beautiful. But both hills and mountains should have been green with late summer, not tawny and gold with autumn.

  Hostlers came to take the horses, darting anxious glances up at Beguchren and only slightly less anxious ones toward Gereint. He thought he recognized one of the men. But the hostler gave no sign that the recognition was mutual. He only gave a respectful little nod and wordlessly took the bay gelding away to the stables.

  They found Eben Amnachudran in the room that was both his office and his wife’s music room; or Beguchren found him there. Gereint only followed, silent and self-effacing.

  The spinet was the same, the floor harp, the racks of scrolls. But the books were all neatly put away on the shelves. Gereint recognized some of the ones Amnachudran had brought from his friend’s house, set now in their own places on those shelves; gold lettering embossed on rich brown cloth, or silver on red silk, or powdered opal on black leather: Maskeirien’s eclogues, Deigantich’s allegory about the white eagle and the black wolf, Hrelern’s four great epics, Fenesheiren’s Analects… They made Gereint think of the quiet days he’d spent cataloging philosophers’ theories of materials for Tehre in the Breidechboden townhouse. He wished, with a sense as of something long ago and now forever unobtainable, that he might someday finish that work and see what use she might make of it.

  “A beautiful library,” Beguchren said to Eben Amnachudran, and with a slight shock Gereint recognized the faint wistfulness of his tone. The mage went to the shelves, touched one embossed leather binding and another. He turned to give Amnachudran a nod of wry self-deprecation. “One does not expect to find a collection of this quality outside the capital—or I had not. It’s a lesson for me. You must have gone to great trouble to build this collection.”

  “Some of the choicest volumes I inherited after the loss of Melentser,” Amnachudran said. “Unfortunately.” He had risen respectfully to greet the lord mage, and now paused. Then he added, with a glance that took in the contents of the room, “Perhaps I had better send these south, lest some scholar inherit them from me a little sooner than I’d anticipated.” His glance, sharpening, returned to Beguchren. “Perhaps you might advise me in that regard, my lord.”

  “The precaution might not go amiss,” Beguchren said softly. He lifted a hand toward a set of chairs near the desk. “You will have a day or two to do so, if you wish. Let us sit and discuss what we shall do.”

  “You have instructions for me?” Amnachudran moved toward the chairs but waited for the mage to sit first. “I had hoped for that, but I did not know whether to expect it. If you have something useful for me to do, my lord mage, I would be delighted, I promise you.”

  Beguchren took the largest and most luxurious of the chairs and then, to Gereint’s surprise, produced the purple-dyed token of a king’s agent. He turned this token over in his slim fingers. It multiplied in his hand, bone clicking softly against bone, one elaborately carved token becoming two, and then four, and then eight… The mage cast the handful of tokens across Amnachudran’s desk, where they rattled like dice: half came up with the Arobern spear-and-shield uppermost and the rest with the tree-and-falcon.

  Beguchren said in his coolest, most precise tone, “Send to Tashen, to Metichteran, Pamnarichtan, Raichboden, Streitgan, Manich, Taub, and Alend. All towns of any size where fewer than three days’ fast travel will allow your messengers to reach the town and for men, returning, to reach this house. I will require men-at-arms from each of those towns. Each governor must send me no fewer than fifty men, even if he must arm tradesmen and farmers to fill out the numbers.” He added, at Amnachudran’s slightly stunned look, “They will bring their own supplies. Their own weapons, rations… tents. They do not need horses; we will not take horses up to the country of fire. You will write the orders; put in what you like. You will not be required to furnish anything but space to keep them.”

  “But, my lord—” Amnachudran began, then stopped.

  Gereint, not so inhibited after days on the road with the mage, asked bluntly, “If you wanted an army, why strip these little northern towns of their half-practiced men? Why not take the professional army the Arobern tried to give you?”

  “But I don’t want an army,” Beguchren said softly. He did not look directly at either of them, but only gazed with remote and rather terrible detachment into the air. The lines of his fine, ascetic face seemed to shift before Gereint: now familiar, now cold and strange. “I don’t want officers who will insist on describing military options. There are no sound military options, now. I don’t need soldiers who will march into the desert and die bravely. No, I don’t want an army. I want
a diversion.”

  “A…” Amnachudran began, but once again stopped. He glanced at Gereint, took a breath. Let it out. Looked back at the mage. “My lord mage… I will send to the towns, just as you command. But may I ask: a diversion for what? It will make a difference, perhaps”—he added apologetically—“for what the men are to bring, and for what, ah, other arrangements must be made.”

  “You are asking whether I mean to send these men to their deaths? There is some risk. But, I hope, not a dire hazard. If the diversion does not work swiftly, it will not work at all.”

  “But you’ll sacrifice them if you must,” Gereint said. Not a question.

  “Oh, yes.” Beguchren turned his ice-pale gaze to Gereint, no less remote for that sudden, intense focus. “I will draw Sipiike Kairaithin and his human fire mage to this place; I will compel them to face me… in the country of earth, if I can. In the country of fire, if I must. If I am able to destroy Kairaithin, that would be as well. But it is utterly crucial that the human fire mage be destroyed. Only that is vital. Her death can and will shift the balance from deep defeat to decisive victory. If this one objective is achieved, it matters little what happens to the griffin mage or to me. I will certainly sacrifice all those men to achieve that aim if I must. But I think that particular sacrifice need not be made.”

  There was a small, profound silence.

  Then Beguchren said to Amnachudran, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone, “Three days to gather, shall we say? But once the men are here, I believe events will move very swiftly.” His glance moved, opaque, unreadable, to catch and hold Gereint’s eyes. He moved his hand, a tiny gesture toward the north, indicating the desert. “And if we do not achieve victory swiftly, we will surely be defeated.”

  “Yes,” Gereint said, a touch impatiently. “You needn’t keep on. I understand.”

  Beguchren did not quite smile. “Yes. Very well.” He glanced at Amnachudran. “You are clear on what you will do?”

  Eben Amnachudran hesitated, his round face creased with worry, but he nodded.

  “Within reasonable bounds, Gereint Enseichen will be able to answer any concerns you may have,” the mage stated, optimistically, in Gereint’s opinion. He gripped the arms of his chair, rose, and sent a remote glance from one of them to the other. “It is early, I know. However, I believe I shall retire. Gereint—”

  Gereint’s now-practiced eye found the subtle evidence of incipient exhaustion in Beguchren’s very stillness, a stillness that was meant to conceal the tremors of sudden weakness. “Shall we—are there griffins near at hand?”

  “I am holding clear the boundaries of earth,” the mage murmured in absent assurance. “They do try me. But I hold the boundaries.” His glance sharpened, moved to catch Amnachudran’s eyes. He added, “They will wait to see what I mean to do before they set their strength against me, and what they think they see will please them—but in the end dismay them utterly. If all men play their parts with passionate sincerity.”

  Amnachudran’s eyebrows drew together in a kind of bewildered resolution. “We’ll see that all men do, then.”

  And if Beguchren did not lie down soon, his part would be a collapse that would dismay him and frighten everyone who wanted to depend on him, was Gereint’s opinion. He confined this thought to a sharp-toned, “I’ll bring up your things myself. Permit me to escort you.” He took the long stride necessary to bring him to the mage’s side, ready to offer covert support if necessary.

  “I’ll have someone show you,” murmured Amnachudran, his eyes narrowed with concern. Yes, Gereint well remembered the scholar’s perceptiveness; Amnachudran had missed nothing. But he only went to the door and called for servants. “Tehre’s room, for the lord mage,” he told the women who came in answer to his call. “And the brown room for the honored Gereint Enseichen.”

  “You’re very kind, honored sir,” murmured Gereint, with a wry, ironic inflection that he trusted only Amnachudran caught.

  The scholar moved his shoulders in a minimal shrug. “If you have a moment later, honored Gereint, perhaps you might indeed answer the concerns I do have? Within, to be sure, reasonable bounds?”

  “In only a moment,” Gereint assured him, and accompanied the frost-haired mage down the hall, ready to catch him if he went down. For the moment, Beguchren was concealing his weakness well enough… If it was not too far…

  The room was not far. “You’ll be well enough?” Gereint asked, watching the mage all but vanish into the embrace of a large and well-cushioned chair. The line between reasonable concern and hovering seemed difficult to tread, at the moment. “I’ll send for tea—”

  “Of course you will.” Beguchren’s tone was reassuringly dry. “I am quite well, Gereint. You do not need to stay so close. Go, if you wish.”

  Gereint gave a noncommittal shrug. “If you say so. I don’t understand. You say no griffins are overhead. It’s nearly dusk. If you’re”—so weak—“experiencing such difficulty now, how can you possibly face this powerful griffin mage you say is your enemy, not to mention the human fire mage he made?”

  Beguchren half smiled, leaning his head back against the headboard of his chair. “Physical strength matters less than you might think in a challenge of this sort. Besides, Gereint, when it comes at last to that challenge, I won’t be alone.”

  Gereint looked at him for a moment. Then he said merely, “All right.” He rose, turned to go out.

  “Gereint,” Beguchren called after him, and he turned back, surprised. But the mage did not speak again, only looked at him with uncharacteristic irresolution.

  After a moment, Gereint shook his head. “It will be well enough,” he said quietly. “In three days, and certainly tonight. Rest. The servant will be along soon with tea. And anything else you need, I’m sure. I’ll see you in the morning. I assure you I will.” He went to the door, glanced back at the mage. Beguchren was sitting quietly, watching him, his expression unreadable, his fine features shadowed by the winged headboard of the chair. Gereint hesitated another moment. Then he left him there like that, sitting alone in the dark.

  Eben Amnachudran was still waiting in the library-study-music room when Gereint made his way back to it. He was alone, absently turning the pages of a book so large it barely fit on the desk. The book was bound in black leather… Erichstreibarn’s Law of Stone and Fire, he saw.

  “Topical,” he commented.

  “Hah.” Amnachudran rose quickly and came to take his hands, looking searchingly into his face. “I have received the most incredible series of letters, fortunately in time to expect you and the lord mage. Are you well? How was Tehre when you left her? Did you know she is coming here? In company with a lord of Feierabiand, apparently.”

  “She’s coming here?” Gereint repeated. And, “With whom?”

  “I’ve sent men by every conceivable path she might take, to stop her on the way and warn her not to come. Half the folk on the road must be mine: I sent nearly all my people south days ago, after I understood the progression of the desert’s edge. Including nearly everyone who would know you by sight, by the way. Someone will find her, I’m sure. I don’t want her to come around the last curve of the road and find sand and fire where her home used to be… She’s worried about her mother and me. And you, I believe, though she didn’t quite say so. You must have suited one another rather well, or so I gather, reading between the words.” He moved to sit down, waving Gereint toward a second chair. “Tell me everything.”

  This was difficult to do without terrifying Amnachudran over things that might have happened, but Gereint tried. The scholar listened without questions or interruptions, but his mouth tightened twice as he caught back an exclamation only with an effort. At the end, his face was pale and set. When Gereint had done, he asked only, “Do you truly think the king meant what he said to you as a threat against my daughter?” and, when Gereint had no answer, “He can’t blame her for Lord Fellesteden’s death. At least, he’ll find little sympathy for that judgment i
f he tries: a young noblewoman defending herself and her household against attack the only way she could, with the only weapon to her hand?”

  “You know people, I’m sure. If he tries, you must make sure the tale that whips around Breidechboden blames me, not her.”

  “Yes, Tehre told me what tale you suggested for her. Though she left out… never mind. It was clever of you to recast, ah, events as you did. And generous.” Amnachudran moved restlessly, rising to light a lamp that hung over his desk; the dusk had crept down from the hills and across the house and Gereint had not noticed. The flickering light of the lamp sent shadows wavering through the room, made it into a small haven of human warmth beneath the crouching darkness.

  The scholar went on, coming back to resume his seat: “But the king himself knows the truth about what happened at my daughter’s house, does he not? Nearly all the truth. So no false tale can be put about now. Perhaps it’s just as well. I do know various people, and my lady wife has a great many friends, and the Tanshans would hardly want a daughter of Emre’s dragged down into the mud. No… no. The king won’t make good that threat. He has no reason to move against Tehre anyway. You are here, after all.”

  Gereint opened his hands in a gesture like a shrug. “I think you needn’t concern yourself. Either the lord mage will succeed and the Arobern will be happy, or he will fail, and the Arobern will have much more important concerns than how Perech Fellesteden died, and by whose hand or will. Though, unfortunately, so will everyone else.”