Land of the Burning Sands

by Rachel Neumeier

  The Arobern’s heavy brows lifted. He asked, “What penalty should attend a judge of mine who interferes with a proper geas in defiance of my law and then conceals that interference? And what difference should it make if that same judge should comport himself creditably during a crisis in the days following that crime?”

  Tehre sat frozen, her hand touching her mouth. Lord Bertaud looked quietly aside, not to intrude on this Casmantian matter. Beguchren was, as always, calmly inscrutable. Gereint didn’t know what he showed—nothing, he hoped. Yet, at least. It took an effort to say nothing, to leave Eben Amnachudran to answer that accusation alone.

  Amnachudran lifted his head. “No difference, of course. The law is very clear that one honorable act does not clear dishonor from an earlier act. As I knew very well.” He got to his feet, took one step forward, and sank to his knees. “Lord King, when I chose to break your law, I should have resigned my judgeship. Instead, yes, I tried to hide what I had done. I ask for mercy.”

  “Do you so? Now?”

  Amnachudran flinched just a little, but visibly. “Lord King, you’ll say I should have come to you then if I would ask for mercy. That to plead for clemency only after one is caught is nothing honorable. That’s true. Of course I should. And I’m aware, as Touchan Dachbraden points out, that any judge renowned for mercy must also be renowned, in precisely equal measure, for injustice. I know it. I don’t argue it.”

  The Arobern went around the massive desk, took a velvet pouch from a drawer, and poured out into his broad hand two familiar silver geas rings. They chimed together as they slid into the king’s hand, delicate and horrifying. The king stirred them with one blunt finger and they chimed again, more quietly. With his new mage’s awareness, Gereint found he could actually see the cold magecraft woven into the rings, like a filigree of frost laid over the silver.

  The king said to Amnachudran, “Justice might be to set the geas on the man who unlawfully interfered with its binding on another. What say you, my judge?”

  Amnachudran had gone dead white. He began to answer, and stopped as Gereint’s hand closed hard on his shoulder. Tehre, with a self-control that amazed Gereint, still said nothing at all, but waited to see what he would do and what the king would do. Her eyes were brilliant with anger and fear.

  Gereint had found himself on his feet and beside Amnachudran without thinking. Now he took an instant for thought, reached the same conclusion the back of his mind seemed to have made first, and said sharply, allowing himself the sharpness, “If I served Beguchren Teshrichten, I should have those rings. You said I might melt them down or throw them in the river, whatever I chose. You said that. But there are other rings, I suppose. I’ll beg you not to use them, Lord King. If I am owed anything at all, I’ll beg you for mercy for my friend.”

  Tehre leaped to her feet and said fiercely, “If I am owed anything, then I will beg for mercy for my father. And I am owed, Lord King! You said you were grateful! And you should be!”

  The Arobern considered her, bright and intense and tiny, with the light shining gold in her hair and her eyes snapping with passion. His expression was hard to read. He drew breath to respond.

  Before the king could speak, Beguchren rose, effortlessly drawing all eyes. His manner impeccably elegant and formal, he went over to where Eben Amnachudran knelt and stood for a moment looking down at him.

  Then Beguchren turned to face the king, standing on Amnachudran’s other side, his small hand resting on the kneeling man’s shoulder in an echo of Gereint’s gesture. When Beguchren looked at the king, it was with a confidence no one else could possibly share; even, perhaps, with a trace of humor. He said gently, “Lord King… I, too, beg you for mercy for this man. Not for justice, for one need not plead for justice from a just king. But for clemency for a man who has served you; for the father of a lady who has served you well; for the friend of my student Gereint Enseichen, who has served you well. And for my sake, because I ask you.”

  Student? Gereint thought, startled. He glanced sidelong at Beguchren’s face, but there was, of course, nothing to read there.

  “Well,” said the Arobern, a little blankly. And then, “I meant to offer clemency, you know, my friend.”

  “I would have thought so,” answered Beguchren, smiling his slight, impenetrable smile. “But as I am the architect of this moment, I wished to be quite certain of the resulting…”

  “Edifice?” suggested the Arobern. “Or artwork, hah?”

  “If you like.” Beguchren glanced down again at the kneeling Amnachudran. “I’m grateful for your assistance,” he said to him softly. “And your kindness, and that of your lady wife. On my own behalf, not the behalf of Casmantium entire.”

  Eben Amnachudran lowered his head in quiet gratitude and then lifted his gaze once more to the king’s face. He did not speak.

  “A king who is renowned for mercy,” said the Arobern, with heavy irony, “must also be renowned in equal measure for injustice.” He paused. No one moved. The king said, “Eben Amnachudran, no judge of mine may disregard my law with impunity. I therefore declare that you are no longer a judge.”

  Amnachudran’s mouth flinched slightly, but he nodded.

  “However, yes, I think the geas would not be a suitable punishment for you, and anyway, I have said I would be clement.” He dropped the silver rings carelessly to the polished surface of the desk and went on: “You dislike the geas, I think. Not only for yourself; you dislike it generally. I think it serves its purpose. But recently it has occurred to me that sometimes it may be too harsh a penalty for one man or another, or applied under questionable circumstances. It has occurred to me that I might appoint an agent of mine to investigate possible abuses of the geas. To determine whether there may be some men—and women—who might have been bound unjustly, or who might reasonably apply”—his mouth twisted slightly—“for clemency. But this work would take a long time, yes? I do not have an agent I can spare to this work.” He paused.

  Then he took a carved bone disk from the same pouch that had held the geas rings. Unusually, the token was dyed in two tones: sapphire on the spear-and-shield face, rich purple on the tree-and-falcon side. The king tossed the token upward and caught it without looking. He said to Amnachudran, “You might undertake this work for me, do you think so? It would take you away from your home, from your family; it would require you to travel widely and spend prodigious effort. So this is not a reward I give you. But it is clemency, I think, yes?”

  “Yes,” Amnachudran whispered. He cleared his throat and said more loudly, “Yes, Lord King. I thank you for your generosity.”

  “Hah.” The Arobern tossed the disk upward once more, caught it. Held it out to Amnachudran. “Take it,” he commanded.

  Gereint put a hand unobtrusively under the older man’s elbow to help him to his feet, but once he was up, Amnachudran walked forward on his own, steadily, to take the dyed token from the king’s hand. The king tipped it into his palm, closed a powerful hand around Amnachudran’s fist as he took it, and said sternly, “The task will require a man of careful judgment. That is important. Not too merciful, not too harsh. Yes?”

  Amnachudran bowed his head. He did not answer hastily, but only after a moment, and in a low, serious tone, “My Lord King, I will try to be worthy of your trust.”

  “I think you will be,” said the Arobern, and let him go. Then he scooped up the geas rings with a sudden motion and held them out to Gereint, who took them. The rings burned in his palm with an odd cold life, not quite like anything he had ever perceived.

  “They are yours,” the king said gravely. “Did I not say they would be?”

  “I believe I might be able to teach you how to unweave the magecrafting,” Beguchren said, equally serious. “It would be a useful exercise.”

  Gereint crushed the first response that came onto his tongue into a polite and restrained, “I’m sure there will be other exercises that will prove as useful.” He, in his turn, tossed the rings to Tehre.
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  She caught them out of the air as neatly as though she had known from the first precisely what he would do. She was smiling. It was a brilliant smile, edged with irony. “Silver’s not the same as stone,” she told him. “I don’t think the same calculations exactly apply.”

  “Do you need them?”

  “No,” Tehre said. “There’s another equation for metals; I’ve just now worked it out.” And she tossed the rings into the air. The light glittered on the silver, and on the frost that wove like lace across the metal… and, with a delicate shivering music like the shattering of tiny bells, the rings dissolved into a glittering dust that scattered across the Arobern’s polished desk.

  The destruction of the symbols of slavery was, in a strange way, more dramatic than freedom itself had been. Gereint felt his mouth curving into an involuntary smile, probably, he suspected, with an edge of concentrated lunacy beneath it. “You’ll have to teach me that equation.”

  Tehre gazed back at him with cautious, pleased surprise that only barely overlay the intensity beneath. “I’ll teach you all the equations. If you like.”

  Gereint could not stop smiling. He wondered how long it might take to erase that caution from her eyes. Not so long, perhaps, with some dedicated effort. He said, “All of them? I’m sure that will take a long time. Years, I expect. But I can’t think of a better way to spend years.” And he crossed to her side and, as he had wanted to do almost from the beginning, folded her small hand in his large one and looked down into her eyes.

  Tehre flushed, and laughed, and glanced at her father and the king… but then she tilted her face up to gaze at Gereint, put her other small hand halfway around his—all it would reach—and said, teasing, but serious as well, “It might take forever. Because when you’ve learned all of them, I’ll invent more.”

  “The philosophers say numbers are infinite,” Gereint said with deep satisfaction. “So there’s no reason we should ever run out.”

  “Go away,” the Arobern said, amused. “Enjoy your infinite equations, and if some of them apply to the building of mountain roads and high bridges, all the better.” He gestured dismissal to them all.

  Gereint lingered to give Beguchren a long look, afraid he might well feel himself abandoned. Beguchren smiled. This time, to Gereint, the smile did not seem entirely inscrutable, but amused and even pleased; avoiding bitterness, he suspected, with a deliberate effort. Gereint nodded to Beguchren, then turned to Eben Amnachudran with an apologetic little tilt of his head that said, I know I should have asked you first, but was not very sincere about the apology. There was nothing but approval and relief in the smile the king’s newest agent returned. And at last Gereint spared the Feierabianden Lord Bertaud a glance of acknowledgment that he tried not to let be smug, and received in return a quiet, sincere nod that almost made him repent the smugness, not that he could restrain it.

  But he didn’t speak to any of them. He only said, “Bridges,” to Tehre, and she, trying not to smile and failing spectacularly, nodded with a pretense of solemnity that fooled no one and answered, “Bridges. We definitely need to study bridges,” and pulled him with her out of the room and the palace and the court entirely, back into the brilliant light of the world.

  acknowledgments

  Thanks to my agent, Caitlin Blasdell, whose insightful comments about my manuscripts always help me fix weaknesses that I should have spotted but missed; and to my editor, Devi Pillai, who not only tells me I’m “awesome,” but also talked me into writing a trilogy when that wasn’t initially what I had in mind.

  extras

  meet the author

  Rachel Neumeier started writing fiction to relax when she was a graduate student and needed a hobby unrelated to her research. Prior to selling her first fantasy novel, she had published only a few articles, in venues such as The American Journal of Botany. However, finding that her interests did not lie in research, Rachel left academia and began to let her hobbies take over her life instead. She now gardens, cooks, raises and shows dogs, and occasionally finds time to read. She works part time for a tutoring program, though she tutors far more students in math and chemistry than in English composition. Find out more about Rachel Neumeier at www.rachelneumeier.com.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed LAND OF THE BURNING SANDS,

  look out for

  LAW OF THE BROKEN EARTH

  THE GRIFFIN MAGE TRILOGY: BOOK THREE

  by Rachel Neumeier

  Mienthe did not remember her mother, and she was frightened of her father—a cold, harsh-voiced man with a scathing turn of phrase when his children displeased him. He favored his son, already almost a young man when Mienthe was born, and left Mienthe largely to the care of a succession of nurses—a succession because servants rarely stayed long in that house. If Mienthe had had no one but the nurses, her childhood might have been bleak indeed. But she had Tef.

  Tef was the gardener and a man of general work. He had been a soldier for many years and lost a foot in a long-ago dispute with Casmantium. Tef was no longer young and he walked with a crutch, but he had never in his life been afraid of any man save, long ago, his sergeant. Certainly he was not afraid of Mienthe’s father. He was as constant a feature of the gardens as the great trees. It never crossed Mienthe’s mind that he might give notice.

  Despite the lack of a foot, Tef carried Mienthe through the gardens on his shoulders. He also let her eat her lunches with him in the kitchen, showed her how to cut flowers so they would stay fresh longer, and gave her a kitten that grew into an enormous slit-eyed gray cat. Tef could speak to cats and so there were always cats about the garden and his cottage, but none of them were as huge or as dignified as the gray cat he gave Mienthe. She named the cat Dusk. The cat slept on Mienthe’s pillow until a nurse, horrified by the shed hairs and the dead mice that turned up in the corners of the room, took him away. Tef told Mienthe he’d found him a comfortable home at a dairy far away where he wouldn’t bother the nurse at all, and that he had plenty of mice to chase and cream to drink. Mienthe believed this implicitly.

  But she also deliberately spilled a bowl of soup at supper and dropped a glass the next evening, and after that deliberately tripped and knocked hard against the table, spilling all the vases of flowers. Mienthe merely waited stoically through her father’s tirades about clumsiness and Why cannot an adult woman teach a child a graceful air? Is my daughter to grow up to be a pig herder or may she someday be allowed in polite society? But the cold sarcasm terrified the nurse, who had hysterics on the third night and gave notice.

  When Mienthe was seven, one of her nurses started teaching her letters. But that nurse had only barely shown her how to form each letter and spell her own name before Mienthe’s father raged at her about Good paper left out in the weather and When are you going to teach that child to keep in mind what she is about? A sight more valuable than teaching a mere girl how to spell, and the nurse gave him notice and Mienthe a tearful farewell. After that, Tef got out a tattered old gardener’s compendium and taught Mienthe her letters himself. Mienthe could spell Tef’s name before her own, and she could spell “bittersweet” and “catbriar” and even “quaking grass” long before she could spell her father’s name. As her father did not notice she had learned to write at all, this did not offend him.

  Mienthe’s nurses never stayed long enough to teach her much, although one, hardier than the others, taught her a little about sewing and a little about how to stand gracefully. Tef could not teach Mienthe embroidery or deportment, but he used a boy’s bow to teach her to shoot, and he taught her to make simple soldier’s medicines out of herbs. He also taught Mienthe to ride by putting her up on her brother’s outgrown pony and letting her fall off until she learned to stay on, which fortunately her brother never discovered, and he taught her to imitate the purring call of a contented gray jay and the rippling coo of a dove and the friendly little chirp of a sparrow so well she could often coax one bird or another to take seeds or crumbs out of he
r hand.

  “It’s good you can keep the cats from eating the birds,” Mienthe told Tef earnestly. “But do you mind?” People who could speak to an animal, she knew, never liked constraining the natural desires of that animal.

  “I don’t mind,” said Tef, smiling down at her. He was sitting perfectly still so he wouldn’t frighten the purple-shouldered finch perched on Mienthe’s finger. “The cats can catch voles and rabbits. That’s much more useful than birds. I wonder if you’ll find yourself speaking to some of the little birds one day? That’d be pretty and charming.”

  Mienthe gazed down at the finch on her finger and smiled. But she said, “It wouldn’t be very useful. Not like speaking to cats is to you.”

  “You’re Lord Beraod’s daughter,” said Tef. “You don’t need to worry about being useful. Anyway, your father would probably be better pleased with an animal that was pretty and charming than one that’s only useful.”

  This was true. Mienthe wished she were pretty and charming herself, like a finch. Maybe then her father… But she moved her hand too suddenly, then, and the bird flew away with a flash of buff and purple, and she forgot her half-recognized thought.

  When Mienthe was nine, a terrible storm came pounding out of the sea into the Delta. The storm uprooted trees, tore the roofs off houses, flooded fields, and drowned dozens of people who happened to be in the path of its greatest fury. Among those who died were Mienthe’s brother and, trying to rescue him from the racing flood, her father.

  Mienthe was her father’s sole heir. Tef explained this to her. He explained why five uncles and four cousins—none of whom Mienthe knew, but all with young sons—suddenly appeared and began to quarrel over which of them might best give her a home. Mienthe tried to understand what Tef told her, but she was frightened and everything was suddenly so noisy and confusing. The quarrel had something to do with the sons, and with her. “I’m… to go live with one of them? Somewhere else?” she asked anxiously. “Can’t you come, too?”