Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  She sat atop her mehari and quietly watched the source of her trouble. Moussa handled the hawk with hands that were long and delicate and almost feminine, his touch as soft as the feathers of the beautiful bird. “Her name is Taka,” Moussa told her proudly. “The sword of Orion.” She was a small terakel, a female, fast and strong and nearly white in color except for a small patch of gray on her chest. He had captured her high in the Atakor, and had spent long patient months training the bird. Daia had learned much about the hawk in the past few days as they traveled together. She had learned much about herself as well.

  She had seen Moussa only twice in the four years since the episode in the guelta, when she had seen his face and his body and had caused him such acute embarrassment. The image had never left her, and once she had tried to make it clear through intermediaries that she would welcome his company. She didn’t know whether it was shyness or anger or whether he simply wasn’t interested, but he had never responded. Over time the images of the guelta faded, and she had given up on him. Then she hadn’t seen him at all for two years, and Mahdi had come into her life.

  Moussa had been making a circuit of the vassal camps of the Dag Rali when word reached him that a djemaa had been called. The amenokal Ahitagel had summoned all the Kel Rela to discuss the imminent expedition of the French, who were massing a caravan in Wargla. The meeting was to be held in ten days’ time in Abalessa, the amenokal’s winter encampment. Along the way Moussa had encountered Daia, who had been making her own way to Abalessa where she was to join Mahdi.

  Her initial glimpse of him had provided the first surprise. She had seen him from a considerable distance, and yet knew immediately who it was. She felt herself flushed with the unexpected pleasure of anticipation. He looked regal and proud and magnificent upon his mehari. His robes were light blue, his veil white. A hooded hawk, majestic in her own right, sat upon his shoulder, brooding and alert. As Daia drew near the hawk turned toward her, tilting its head beneath the hood, sensing her presence. At the same time she saw the bright blue eyes of the man smiling behind the veil.

  “You have grown well, Daia,” he said without prelude when they met. “I am pleased to see you.”

  There was nothing more than correctness in his voice, but she felt herself blushing anyway. “As I am pleased also. It has been much time.”

  “You are alone?”

  “I was traveling with the ehen of Mano Biska,” she replied. “I was parted from the others when I stopped to visit my cousin in Ideles. I am going to Abalessa.”

  “As am I. Do you wish an escort?”

  “I need none,” she said, a little haughtily. “I am able to care for myself.”

  “I am aware that you are better with a blade than most men,” Moussa said. “Your reputation makes its way to my camp, even if you do not. I meant escort for company, of course, not for protection.”

  “I believe you meant it for protection.”

  He sighed. “Very well then. Will you escort me to Abalessa?”

  “Will you keep your clothes on?” she asked innocently.

  Moussa started, caught off-guard by the reference to the incident at the guelta. He recovered quickly. “If there are no thieves nearby then yes, I shall.”

  “There are thieves everywhere in the desert.”

  “Then, mademoiselle, they had best beware the naked man,” Moussa said, mixing languages as he often did, his eyes alight.

  Daia leapt at that. “There is but little to beware, as I recall,” she said, and they laughed and their journey together began. As their meharis fell into an unhurried rhythm she had her next unsettling surprise. As pleased as she had been to see him, she was even more pleased that they were alone. She chided herself for such thoughts and pushed them from her mind.

  They were five days’ ride from Abalessa. Moussa traveled slowly, stopping frequently to work with Taka. During the early mornings and late afternoons the bird rode on his shoulder, but the rest of the day when the sun was high it rode in its own shelter. He had constructed a miniature tent on the pommel of his saddle, its front open so that a gentle breeze would pass through and cool the bird as they rode. She was amazed at the trouble Moussa had taken. “I have heard that only the sultan of Morocco rides in such a litter,” she said.

  “If he weren’t so fat and could fly for me like Taka I would gladly construct another for him,” Moussa replied.

  Several times a day they halted when Moussa spotted game. Sometimes it was a lizard or a snake sunning itself atop a rock, or perhaps a jerboa, a little desert mouse, hopping frantically between hideouts. A scorpion might be scuttling along the sand. Occasionally they would even see a hare. In the rock desert through which they rode such game was plentiful, if only one looked sharply enough. Moussa’s eyes seemed as keen as the hawk’s.

  He had adapted the hunting process quite well to the desert. Usually there was no one to flush the game for which the hawk waited, so he used the tools of his childhood. With a motion that showed infinite practice and patience, Moussa drew his slingshot from his robe and, one-handed, fit a pebble to the sling. Then he would slip the leather hood off the hawk, let loose of its jesses, and launch her into the sky. As she circled on powerful wings he raised his slingshot and quickly let his pebble fly. The sand near the quarry would erupt and the game would be on the move, and the hunt was joined. With grace and speed and power the hawk would wheel and swoop down, straight as a lance, a killer on wings, gauging the path of the fleeing animal as it sought cover in the rocks or beneath the cram-cram bushes scattered across the land. Sometimes the prey would win, disappearing into a hole or beneath a rock without a second to spare, leaving Taka to screech in rage as her wings beat against the desert air. She would rise to Moussa’s lure, to sulk and nurse her injured pride as she awaited the next opportunity.

  But defeat was rare for Taka. More often her powerful talons would find their mark and she would seize the game and break its neck or, in the case of a snake, rise back into the sky to drop it onto the rocks where it would be stunned or killed. Then Taka would screech again, louder now in victory, eeeek-eek-eek, and descend on her kill. Quickly Moussa would offer the lure. Taka would stare at him for a moment, as if deciding, and then reluctantly rise from her kill toward the lure, and end her outing on the leather at his wrist. He would quickly reward her with a liver or brain from the kill and, voice cooing, softly sing her praises. He would slip on her hood and when she was calm again he would return her to her perch atop the saddle. Taka preened herself carefully. First she roused, lifting her feathers until she looked like a duster, then shaking herself violently to settle them into place again. After that she oiled each feather with her beak. When she was finished she stretched each leg, and then her wings and tail.

  Moussa regarded her proudly. “She is a fine one,” he said. “Mannered and persistent. Her spirit is great. She is the best I have had.” Every kill required a slightly different approach, master and hawk working harmoniously together in a seamless blend of Moussa’s efforts and Taka’s natural skill. Moussa would lay the plan; Taka would carry it out.

  “You are a poet with her,” Daia said in wonder as she watched. “But why does she always come back? Why doesn’t she just leave?”

  “Because she knows me. We are comfortable together. She does my bidding as I do hers. I feed her, she feeds me. I suit her needs today, as she suits mine.”

  “And if she does fly away?”

  “Then she is free,” he said, shrugging, “a daughter of the desert once more. She will fly away one day. I will make her, if she doesn’t do it on her own. She was wild once, and will be wild again. I have only borrowed her spirit from the desert. She was not born to live at the end of a jess. She is mine only for a season, and never really mine at all. When she leaves I will catch another, and begin again. That is the way of it. I doubt I’ll find another like Taka, though.”

  There was infinite patience in him as well as passion for the birds and the hunt. She saw it in hi
s eyes and his touch. “My father taught me to hunt,” he said. “Nearly every day we went out into the woods near our house for rabbits and quail. One day when I was six we even killed a boar.”

  “What is a boar?”

  “Too much to catch with a hawk,” he said, laughing, and he told her of the day near the Bois de Boulogne when Paul saved his life, and of the little fort they had in the grand oak tree that stood near the lake across which he had seen the emperor of France. He chatted on for hours about that other world, a world of top hats and carriages, where the water was plentiful and turned to ice in the winter and where the snows fell everywhere, not just in the highest mountains.

  “There are wide boulevards in Paris lined with trees,” he told her, spreading his arms expansively. “The buildings are nearly as big as our dunes.”

  Her eyes widened. “Why on earth would anyone wish to live in such a crowded place?” she asked. “Why would they wish to live in a house built of unmoving stone? Why would they wish a roof over their heads? How would they know the sky? How would they know freedom?” She shook her head. “It is odd that people choose to live in such a backward fashion. It is no better than the harratin who till the soil, forever chained to their plots of land.”

  He had no answer for that.

  But aside from the handicap of the houses that held them down, the French seemed an interesting enough people, and she listened raptly to his descriptions, enchanted by the breadth of his imagination, which, she thought, must surely be the only place where some of the things as he described could exist. He told her of fireworks and cannons and gaslights, of palaces with fountains where water tumbled out of the mouths of stone figures.

  “Your stories are beautiful and clever,” she said. “I often wonder whether you are but an extraordinary liar,” she teased when he told her about the telegraph. He laughed and protested his innocence and assured her it was all true, “except for the parts I make up.”

  Whether she believed or not, she found herself caught up in the words, in his descriptions, in his zest for the world of his childhood. He was charming and quick-witted and the oddest man she had met. In every inch he was a nobleman, but a nobleman such as she had never seen among the Ihaggaren. He sat erect and moved with easy grace and had the delicate features in his hands and feet that marked his high birth. But the haughtiness and reserve of the race, so highly prized in others, was missing in him. He was instead a blend of irreverence and wit, a mixture that delighted her.

  “Your barbarian side is demented,” she told him more than once as she laughed at his comments about himself and others.

  “Thoroughly,” he agreed, not without a note of pride.

  His attitude was contagious, and she chattered back with ease. The miles drifted by and Taka hunted and that night they camped and made a fire. He made a great show of cooking for her like a slave, although she wouldn’t eat much of what Taka caught. “That lizard could be your uncle,” she reminded him as she warily regarded the reptile grilling over a bed of coals. It was well known that ancestors inhabited the bodies of reptiles. No one among the Ihaggaren except Moussa would ever have eaten such a thing. He scoffed gently at her superstition and ate it anyway. “It does not taste all that bad for a relative.” He smiled, but made couscous for her while she made them bread, kneading the dough and baking it in the sand beneath the coals.

  After they had eaten and the camels were tended they settled before the fire with their backs to the rocks and drank strong tea. He told her stories until the gray twilight before dawn. They huddled next to each other in their separate cloaks to ward off the frigid winds. The sun had just risen when they reluctantly let sleep take them at last.

  Through everything they did ran the strong thread of laughter. It was easy, comfortable, everywhere. They laughed at things they hadn’t laughed at before, at things that hadn’t been funny until they saw them together at the same moment. They laughed at the antics of the jerboa as it hopped before the night fire, carrying bits of bread to its mouse house, and at the grotesque complaints of their meharis as they were loaded in the morning, and at Moussa’s imitation of an abbess he called Godrick – a thoroughly sacrilegious display that Daia only partially understood but which had her nearly in tears.

  For both of them, it was a time that passed much too quickly.

  All the while she knew he was not courting her, that he realized she was on her way to join her betrothed. There was no pressure on them and so they were able to be free, free to enjoy each other without other eyes or ears nearby to disapprove or to spread gossip, free to be silly and young, free to say whatever they liked, free to be alive.

  She didn’t know when it changed, only that it had. It was on the third morning when she realized that her gentle trembling was not from hunger or the night cold, but that it swept across her like a breeze whenever he came near. In her life there had never been such a feeling. In her life there had never been such a time.

  She did her best to hide it from him, and from herself. She found herself staring at him, watching the easy way he rode his mehari, or his hands as they handled the hawk or mixed the flour and water for bread. When he glanced toward her she looked away quickly so he couldn’t see she had been watching. After he had fallen asleep at night she lifted herself on one elbow and looked at him until dawn, a tender smile on her face.

  On the morning of the fourth day they were standing before the fire, their minds and bodies numb with fatigue, yet somehow completely alive with the adrenaline of happiness. They were chattering and giggling, preparing for the day’s journey. For a moment a silence passed between them and their eyes met. On an impulse she began to reach up to him, to touch his veil. The next instant she caught herself. She felt Mahdi’s eyes burning into the depths of her soul where things were happening even she didn’t understand. A cloud of guilt passed over her. She dropped her hand and turned away and the moment passed.

  The rest of that day she strengthened her resolve to stop acting in ways that made the guilt come. She succeeded in pretending indifference toward Moussa, turning away and trying not to laugh when he said something amusing. For the first time there was awkwardness between them.

  “Are you troubled?” Moussa asked, his voice gentle with concern.

  “No,” she said. “I was only thinking of my marriage.” It was true, so she didn’t understand why she hated herself instantly for saying it. She thought Moussa’s head jerked a little at the words. After that he was uncharacteristically quiet and for the first time in nearly four days they rode in a sad unnatural silence that was as suffocating as the desert heat. Suddenly each stride of the camel seemed interminable, and Daia didn’t know what to do. One part of her wanted their journey to end quickly, wanted to arrive in Abalessa where all the confusion might end. The rest of her, most of her, wanted their journey to last forever.

  Through the long hours it tore at her. Moussa stopped to hunt. She watched him without getting off her mehari. When he went to retrieve the game Taka caught, he found a small patch of flowers growing beneath a bush. He pulled one up and looked at it. Its petals were bright blue and had bloomed for less than a day. By that night they would be withered and gone. He kept the flower, intending to give it to her. But when he returned to where she waited, he saw her upon her mehari, and saw the pain on her face, and decided it would be a mistake. He had no right.

  And when he was certain she wasn’t looking he let the flower drop to the ground.

  But she did see.

  * * *

  That night Moussa shivered in his robe by the dying fire and watched the brilliant stars. He was too exhausted to sleep, too numb, his mind too busy. He listened to the even sound of her breathing as she lay in her own robe next to him. When he closed his eyes his world opened up into a kaleidoscope of images of the last few days. He held on to each one until it faded away to the next, and then he began again. He felt himself smiling, and once laughed out loud. Later he fought back a tear. He had never been cl
oser to another human being; he had never felt so alone. There was so much he wanted to say to her, and yet there was Mahdi, who had passed like a shadow, it seemed, between them. Sometime in the night he finally drifted off into a fitful sleep.

  And then the dream came – a dream he had had before yet a dream so intense he knew it was something completely different. He felt her there, slipping up beneath his robes, her body soft and warm as she made her way next to him, and it was a perfect dream, so much better than the others – a dream in which he felt every curve, every breath, felt her silken skin against his own, felt her fingers as she explored him and he grew hard, a dream in which he touched her with more gentleness than he knew he possessed, touched her with more feeling than he had ever known, as if she were made of sand and might crumble beneath his caress. And then in a flash of desire they melted together, moaning, whispering each other’s name, desperately clinging, and then he was inside her and there were tears of joy and their passion burst in a white-hot instant of sunlight. It lasted all night, the dream, through long, luxurious hours of exploration, of feeling, of enchantment, and in those hours he found everything, found her cheeks with his lips and found the small of her back with his fingertips and found her nipples and all the soft sweet mysterious places he had only imagined before. His heart pounded and he wanted to laugh and to cry at the same time and wanted the dream never to end, never to stop, wanted all his dreams to be this way…

  And through it all he knew it was not a dream, and that made him hold on to her even more desperately, and she to him; and they knew that when the night was over it would be finished, that the dream would never be again.

  * * *

  All across the Sahara storms of intrigue raged over the French Lieutenant Colonel Flatters and his mission.

  In the busy caravan crossroads of Murzuk, the Turkish bey attempted to calm the nerves of the merchants who feared the loss of commerce should the French succeed in building their railway. The bey received instructions from Tripoli and in turn met with his own agents. He dispatched them with detailed instructions and a significant portion of his treasury to In Salah, there to await the amenokal of the Hoggar Tuareg.